


Here and Where You Are

by crinklefries



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Angst, Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Compliant, Doctor Strange tries to fix some broken hearts, M/M, Multi-Era, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Post-Serum Steve Rogers, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Slight Steve Rogers/Peggy Carter - Freeform, Slow burn in a way, The world is ending but that's too real, different timelines, sorta time travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-19
Updated: 2017-04-07
Packaged: 2018-10-07 14:44:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 10
Words: 29,622
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10362762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crinklefries/pseuds/crinklefries
Summary: In his first life, Bucky Barnes never gets his happy ending.This changes everything, so he has to try, and try again.





	1. out of time, pt. i

**Author's Note:**

  * For [inyron](https://archiveofourown.org/users/inyron/gifts).



> Written for the lovely @inyron, who bid on me for the FandomTrumpsHate auction on Tumblr and donated to the ACLU, an organization near and dear to my heart. :) I was given a variety of nebulous options, including time traveling and angst. I don't know if this monstrosity fulfills either of those requests, but, well, technically it's about time and technically there's traveling and Bucky is definitely at least sad most of the time, so, I tried. Thank you for being so patient about how long this took to write!
> 
> I have no earthly idea how it ended up as long as it did, so hopefully it's at least enjoyable.
> 
> Because this is an unintended monstrosity, I will be posting it in multiple chapters.

**_“i exist in two places, here and where you are”_ **

**_-margaret atwood_ **

*

**[ out of time, pt. I ]** ****  
  


The stones so laid out before him, Stephen studies them, reads their cast against the backdrop of the world as he sees it, from his summit. He breathes in air that crackles of chaos, an edge that should not be there. Something has gone wrong, somewhere in time, and Stephen can see multiple timelines set out before him, golden edges shimmering between his third and fourth eyes. 

In one timeline, Earth as it should have been, always on the edge of disaster, but never quite teetering into the abyss. In this timeline, there are heroes and there are villains. Right and wrong are never so black and white, but there is a distinct pattern--there is an Iron Man to combat the Iron Monger, a Nick Fury to face off with Alexander Pierce, a Falcon against Crossbones, a Black Panther to protect Wakanda, the Hulk against the Abomination, a Black Widow against everyone else. In this timeline, it all starts at a single moment, the decision of a sick young man, a Captain America to keep the Red Skull from bombing much of the world into Nazi oblivion. This timeline hovers in Stephen’s third eye, while there’s a second and a third unfolding, each in different, yet similar configurations.

And then, somewhere between Stephen’s fourth eye and the migraine beginning to throb near his right temple, he sees the timeline as it currently is--a post-apocalyptic, fiery conflagration of death. A planet collapsing under the weight of its own hatred. Evil without the presence of good. Something has gone terribly wrong.

He casts the stones again. They’re wrong, the pattern of them. The ones that glow should be dim and the ones that stay dark should be pulsing with light. They’re all red hot, burning to the touch, when they should be cool. It’s a thin line to walk, the arrangement of timelines. He casts them again. Wrong. And again. Still wrong.

He withdraws his hand, studies the visions before him.

Somewhere, here, there is a common link. There is a single moment, an instance, or a movement that sets the timelines astray.

Stephen frowns, draws up the second timeline. On the first glance, it looks right. In the end, the cast is still wrong. He draws it closer, seats himself inside his eye. Years pass by in the span of seconds. A flash of blond here, a blur of brown there. At every corner, hearts that fold around breakage.

No, he thinks, observing.

Maybe not a single moment.  
  


Maybe, Stephen Strange thinks, fingertips at his lips, a single person.


	2. first eye: 1934

**  
_i. first eye: 1934._  
**

**june.**

That summer is a particularly hot one. Bucky thinks, years later, that if he remembers nothing else about that summer, he’ll remember how thick and heavy the heat felt against his skin. He colors easily, a child of children of immigrants, and the sweat sticks to his newly brown skin, first in droplets along the nape of his neck, and then in sheets down the rest of his back. He lays on his stomach, sprawled on the grass near the docks because the sand is rocks and the water of the Hudson is likely poisonous. 

“You’re gonna get burned,” a small voice next to him says. A toe digs into his side and when Bucky still doesn’t answer, it gives him an encouraging jab. “You do this every time.” 

“Do what?” Bucky asks, lazily. It’s so hot he can’t even be bothered to turn his head. His long, growing limbs are spread out around him, a starfish out of toxic water. 

“You lay sprawled in the sun and then you get burned and then you complain for the next week,” the voice says. It sounds half exasperated, half amused. “And do you know who’s gotta listen to your sorry mug complain for the next week?” 

“No, Rogers,” Bucky says. “Tell me. Tell me who gotta listen to my sorry mug.” 

Steve sighs. He’s sitting next to Bucky, limbs folded into himself, making himself even smaller than he already is. When Bucky finally turns his head to watch him, he thinks it’s absurd that a guy who’s barely five foot four inches can somehow make himself smaller, but Steve tries, and any more inches and he’ll disappear altogether. The thought, unbidden, comes to mind and Bucky has the sudden, overwhelming urge to reach out and grab Steve’s ankle, to keep him there with him, safe, all five foot four inches of him. 

Steve fidgets with the edge of the long-sleeved shirt he’s wearing, rolls it up just past his thin wrists. 

“Your Ma’s gonna kill you if you don’t stop,” Bucky says, but he feels bad saying it. It’s probably over a hundred degrees in the shade and Steve has to wear loose pants and a loose, long-sleeved shirt because a month ago he had sat in the sun with Bucky for a few hours and he had gotten sun burnt so badly, he’d broken his newly minted Three Months Without A Hospital Visit record. He’d mourned that for at least a week after. He’d also almost assuredly gotten a mild case of sun poisoning, but he stubbornly refuses to add that to the long list of ailments he’s had during his short life. 

Almost sixteen years old and a walking, talking failing experiment out of a medical book, Steve often describes himself. Bucky gets annoyed at that, swats at Steve’s shoulder, like he always does when Steve’s being self-deprecating. But, as Steve is almost always being self-deprecating, it doesn’t seem to work very well. 

“It’s too hot,” Steve complains. He’s toed off his shoes, just to get some sun on his pale feet and Bucky’s already watching them turn pink for his efforts. “The air is still. We’re by the water. Why’s it still?” 

“Last I checked we were in Brooklyn, not on a tropical island somewhere,” Bucky says. He begins the long and arduous process of peeling himself off the grass. 

“Maybe when I die, I can come back as a tropical island,” Steve says wistfully. 

That  _ really _ annoys Bucky, but it’s too hot to swat at Steve right now and he’s too far besides, so he settles for glaring at him. Steve shrugs. 

“You’re not dying anytime soon, pal,” Bucky says.  _ Or ever _ , he promises to himself, but he has to have a few more conversations with God about that first. “Gotta live to your birthday first.” 

“That’s in a week,” Steve says. “Not setting the bar very high there, Buck.” 

“Shut up,” Bucky informs him. He finally pulls himself to a sitting position and, honestly, it wasn’t even close to worth the effort. “What d’you wanna do?” 

“For what?” Steve asks. He buries his toes into the grass, wipes sweaty bangs out of his eyes. 

“For Arbor Day,” Bucky says, rolling his eyes. 

“Guess we could plant a tree,” Steve offers.

“You’re an idiot.” Bucky sighs as he faces Steve, cross-legged on the ground. His limbs seem to be longer than he remembers them some days, so he doesn’t even bother moving away when his knees press against Steve’s. “Your Ma gonna make you apple pie?” 

“I hope so,” Steve brightens, but then dims almost immediately. He sighs as well, picks at pieces of grass and throws them at Bucky, unthinkingly. Bucky makes a face. “I dunno, Ma’s been under the weather lately. I think she’s working too hard.” 

Mrs. Rogers is a saint of a woman, in Bucky’s estimation. Not only has she been raising Steve by herself since birth, but she’s basically been raising Bucky too, as much as he’s been over at their place since the ripe age of seven. She always looks beautiful, all blonde curls pinned away, and bright blue eyes that her son, of course, had to inherit. She works two jobs, always cooks Bucky’s favorite foods when he comes over, unapologetically teaches the boys about politics and the world, and loves Steve more than anyone has a right to love another human being. Bucky loves her for that, that she’s the only person who loves Steve more than he does.

“She’s sick?” Bucky asks, frowning. 

Steve shrugs.

“She’s been coughing a lot. Tired.” 

“Maybe it’s a summer cold,” Bucky says.

“Maybe.” But Steve doesn’t look convinced.

Bucky swats a mosquito away from Steve’s arm the moment he sees it, secretly convinced that any mosquito is liable to give Steve Rogers malaria because if anyone was gonna get malaria from a mosquito in Brooklyn, it  _ was _ gonna be Steve Rogers. 

“I was thinking,” Steve hesitates.

Bucky stretches his legs out in front of him. He and Steve face each other. Steve’s knees are still drawn up, but Bucky’s bare skin still touches his hips and part of his thigh. The touch is comforting. Bucky always feels better when they’re touching. He thinks it’s because it’s the only time he’s absolutely positive that Steve is with him. 

“Uh huh.” 

“I dunno,” Steve says. He scratches his nose. “I’m sixteen--”

“Fifteen,” Bucky corrects.

“ _ Sixteen _ ,” Steve glares. “I’m sixteen. Maybe it’s time I got a job.”

Bucky freezes.

“You can’t leave school,” he says.

“I did most of high school,” Steve mumbles. “It’s not that bad. And Ma could use the money.”

Bucky stares at him. Then he throws his head back and laughs. 

Steve glares at him, a little flash of hurt crossing his face. 

“Hey--”

“No, it’s just,” Bucky gets out between breaths of laughter. “Imagine your Ma’s face. When you tell her you’re gonna drop out of school. To get a job. Imagine it.” 

Steve has the wherewithal to look sheepish. 

“She might--”

“No, please, Stevie,” Bucky says. He’s still laughing. “ _ Please _ tell Sarah Rogers you’re gonna drop out. Please tell her in  _ front _ of me so I can take a photograph when she raps you about the head.” 

“You’re such a  _ jerk _ ,” Steve complains. He sighs dramatically and then falls back onto the grass. The sun beats down on him, plastering his bangs across his face. He tries to blow them out of his eyes and when he’s unsuccessful, he dramatically gives up. 

Bucky, still chuckling, switching sides. He lays down next to Steve, shoulder-to-shoulder. Makes sure, mentally, that he’s still there. 

Steve’s still grumbling and it’s hot and there’s no air and it’s  _ summer _ , but Bucky doesn’t even try to move away. He gives into his instincts, rests his head against Steve’s shoulder. 

Steve lets out another sigh, but doesn’t complain. Steve never complains. Well, no. Steve always--literally  _ always _ \--complains. But not about this. Not about Bucky. 

“It’ll be okay, you know,” Bucky says. 

The silence between them stretches hazy, comfortable and lazy. 

“Yeah,” Steve says. “I know.”

They lay there in silence, faces turned up to the sun. Eventually, their fingers tangle together, like they have every summer since they were seven years old. And if Bucky’s heart beats a little faster for it, well, it’s because the heat does weird things to teenage boys and the Hudson River is toxic. 

 

**july.**

  
Bucky thinks he almost looks forward to Steve’s birthday more than Steve himself. Every year the three of them--him, Steve, and Steve’s Ma--steal a bench at the corner of the park. Mrs. Rogers reads a book and Steve and Bucky play cards and they watch fireworks and laugh as Steve and Bucky eat themselves sick on fresh, homemade apple pie and ice cream. It’s the one day out of the year Steve is never, ever sick and the one day Mrs. Rogers doesn’t scold him for forcing himself sick anyway. 

Of all of the memories Bucky will take away from his life, he thinks Steve’s birthdays are  the ones he’ll never manage to forget.

  
This year is different. This year Sarah actually is sick and she’s so tired of her son fluttering around worrying about her that she gives him and Bucky money to take the train down to Coney Island. Steve accuses her of trying to get rid of him and she promptly replies that that is precisely what she is doing. Mother and son bicker in a way that Bucky doesn’t think is strictly allowed, it’s so full of affection. Before Steve and Bucky leave, pockets a little fuller than usual, Steve leans down to kiss Sarah on her forehead and her fingers, long and pale on his cheek, make something heavy settle in Bucky’s chest. He’s out the door and down the steps before Steve can ask what’s wrong.  
  


Every time at Coney Island, it goes like this: Steve insists on going on the roller coaster; they stand in line for an hour; Bucky gets eaten by mosquitos; mosquitos try to eat Steve and Bucky rescues him from them; they see someone they know not in line--maybe Bobby Jones, who is always there, or Lucy Carmichael, who is always there on a date, or Jack McGee, who Steve absolutely  _ cannot _ stand--buying funnel cake; Steve says he wants funnel cake instead; Bucky says they have been in line for a  _ goddamned hour; _  Steve decides he doesn’t want to ride the roller coaster anyway; Bucky says  _ no Steve, you don’t get it, we have been in line for a goddamned hour _ ; they bicker; a five year old behind them in line laughs at them; they get to the front of the line; Bucky drags Steve onto the roller coaster; Steve screams the entire ride; they get off the roller coaster; Steve is pale as a sheet and insists he is fine, that it was fun; Steve gets sick because he is not, in fact, fine and did not, in fact, have fun; Bucky swears he is  _ never _ going to let Steve do this to them again; Steve forgets this an hour later when they’re having funnel cakes, finally, and Bucky tries to keep Steve from fighting Jack McGee. 

Why Bucky thought this trip to Coney Island would be different, not even he’s sure. 

“ _ Every time, Rogers _ ,” Bucky says. “Every  _ goddamn time _ .” 

“Don't take the Lord's name in vain,” Steve somehow manages, a good Catholic boy with his head buried over the edge of a trash  can.

Steve retches and Bucky rubs his neck, his back, sympathetically.

“You’re an idiot.” Bucky’s favorite refrain.

Steve’s thin, bird-frame shoulders shake under the effort of upending his stomach and Bucky’s own stomach clenches. He hates seeing Steve like this, hates seeing him sick, hates seeing him in any sort of pain, which he is in, a lot. Bucky runs his fingers through the sweaty blond tufts at the back of Steve’s head and as Steve’s own shaking subsides, Bucky’s fingers slow. His palm rests on the back of Steve’s neck and he nearly recoils, the thought comes to him so suddenly.

That he would do anything to keep Steve from ever being sick again. That he would do anything to shield him from pain, if he could. That he could stand here, next to Steve, palm on his neck, for the rest of their lives.

Steve finally straightens, wipes his mouth on the back of his hand. His blue eyes are hazy, his face twisted in grimace. He’s sweaty and tired, but he’s still going to demand funnel cake in an hour. And Bucky’s going to say it’s a bad idea and Steve’s going to insist it isn’t and Bucky’s going to buy it for the two of them anyway and they’re going to share it on the boardwalk, powdered sugar dusting their fingertips and inevitably getting into Steve’s hair, no matter how hard he tries to keep it away.

“What?” Steve asks, frowning, when Bucky’s been staring at him for too long.

Bucky’s breath is shaky in his chest, the ground shifting beneath his feet. Steve is five foot four inches of confused, looking back at him. He reaches forward, pushes Steve’s bangs out of his eyes.

“Hey,” he says. “Do you want funnel cake?”

Steve’s frown deepens. He looks uncertain, queasy.

_ Say no _ , Bucky thinks, desperately.

Steve shakes his head slowly.

Then he brightens.

“Maybe in an hour.”

Bucky’s hand shakes as he draws it back to himself.

He thinks he could cry, he loves Steve Rogers so much.

  
They get back home in time for the fireworks. Sarah Rogers, the saint that she is, is still too tired to join them in the park, but has managed to make her famous apple pie nonetheless, a small container of ice cream setting on the counter next to it.

Steve thanks her, wraps her in a hug, and she presses kisses into his hair. Bucky can’t watch them for too long, a growing lump in his throat. He looks away and pretends not to hear the soft  _ I love you, Ma _ and  _ Happy Birthday, my dear boy _ behind him.

  
They take the pie and the ice cream to the park, sit at their favorite bench with cards. Steve shuffles them lazily. Bucky fingers a package he’s hidden in his sack. He’s nervous about it, so, of course, he acts as though he doesn’t care when, in the grass, leaning back against the bench seat, shoulder-to-shoulder, again, he reaches inside and retrieves the poorly wrapped present.

“Buck?” Steve asks when Bucky hands it over.

They don’t get each other presents, Steve and Bucky, not really. They’re sixteen (and seventeen) years old and don’t have a whole lotta money. Mostly Steve gives Bucky drawings and Bucky buys Steve food when they’re out. But this year--well, Bucky saw it and, whatever, he can get his best friend a birthday present if he wants.

“Whatever,” Bucky says. “I can get my best friend a birthday present if I want.”

Steve blinks at him before a shy, pleased smile steals over his face.

Bucky curses at Steve internally, watches that smile with the hunger of one who knows he’ll never really have the meal he’s always wanted.

Steve puts aside the deck of cards and pulls the package onto his lap.

“It’s nothing,” Bucky begins. “No big deal.”

“Uh huh,” Steve says. He starts peeling the wrapping paper slowly, carefully, edge by edge.

“It’s your sixteenth birthday,” Bucky says. “That’s special and all. I couldn’t  _ not _ get you something. Ma didn’t raise me to be rude.”

“Uh huh,” Steve says again. He’s halfway through unwrapping it and Bucky’s stomach is heavy with nerves.

“It’s really  _ not _ a big--”

“Holy god,” Steve says, pausing. “Can you  _ shut up _ ?”

Bucky opens his mouth and closes it, glaring. He crosses his arms across his chest.

He hears the small gasp of pleasure, as quiet as it is. He looks over to Steve and Steve’s eyes are saucer-round, wide, and disbelieving. There’s a large, new, pastel set in the midst of wrapping paper on his lap. It’s so new there are colors that aren’t available anywhere else yet.

“Bucky.” Steve’s voice sounds small, dry.

Bucky’s ears burn pink.

“I thought you--” he starts and stops. Starts again. “You’re almost out of your colored pencils and I like your charcoal drawings just fine, but you’re so good at color and--”

Steve looks flummoxed. He honestly looks close to tears.

“Buck, this musta cost you--” he stops. Takes a breath, starts again. “It’s too much. You shouldn’t have done this.”

Bucky shrugs, ears still pink.

“I’m just being selfish,” he says. “Now I can make you draw me things in color to hang around the house and stuff. You know I hate the art Ma puts up.”

“I don’t know what to say,” Steve says.

“Do you--” Bucky hesitates. He runs a hand through his hair. “Do you like it?”

“Like it?” Steve looks at him as though he’s grown a second head. “You’re crazy. This is too much. You’re too much.”

Bucky shrugs again, but pleased this time.

Steve looks like he’s hesitating about something, but then he doesn’t care. He leans forward, wraps his arms around Bucky’s shoulders, and pulls him into a tight hug.

“Thank you,” Steve says, quietly. And then, even quieter, “I don’t deserve you.”

And it’s really only because he has Steve in his arms, because Bucky has his own arms wrapped around his best friend, breathing in the scent of his hair--fresh, clean, soap and, strangely, basil--that Bucky himself doesn’t cry.

“You’re stupid,” he whispers into Steve’s hair.

There’s fireworks that start above their heads, small, contained explosions of color. Lovely shades of orange, red, and yellow, like a pastel set burst against a dark background. Bucky shudders.

“Happy Birthday,” he says.

When he withdraws, he doesn’t kiss Steve, but he thinks about it.

  
He thinks about it a lot after then, kissing Steve.

He thinks about it long after--

  
  


**september.**

It starts out the way it always does: with a cold. They’re out on the docks one day, watching the ships come in and move out. It’s Bucky’s idea. He loves the water, loves the idea of ships, has accepted, internally, that no matter how well he does in school it’s never gonna be good enough to do anything more than manual labor. It’s not because he isn’t bright (he is) or because his Ma and Pa don’t believe in him (they do). It’s because they’re in the middle of the Great Depression and Ma doesn’t work and Pa works too much and he’s got three younger siblings who think the moon of him. It’s okay, Bucky thinks, because he knows he’s strong and he knows he’s got the personality for the docks and, most of all, he knows when he gets bored of not using his mind, he can pilfer a science fiction pulp from the library and narrate his own science fiction pulp to Steve on the weekends.

So it’s his idea that day, going down to the docks, Bucky wrapped in a light coat and Steve bundled tight in a warmer one, a thick blanket of a scarf wrapped around his neck, and a hat Bucky’s Ma knit for him last Christmas perched on top of his fair blond head. Even in twelve layers, Steve’s teeth chatter as the wind from the water pushes through the cloth, his cheeks rosy, and his fingers ice cold. Bucky buys Steve a hot cider and buys them some fried fish in a paper cone and it warms them for a while. It’s not enough, he thinks later. It was never going to be enough. He’ll never forgive himself for this one mistake. 

  
“I don’t know, Buck,” Steve looks at the ships, doubtfully. There are dockhands working on board, unloading and loading crates.

“Don’t know what there is to not know,” Bucky shrugs. They stand at the railing, shoulder-to-shoulder, watching sailors yell at each other. The wind, so non-existent that summer, whips through, almost bitterly cold.

Bucky’s eyes water and Steve winces next to him.

“You cold?” Bucky asks, concerned.

“‘M fine,” Steve says. Bucky is disinclined to believe him, but he’s in his last year of high school now and he has to start making contacts at the docks. He might as well spend time with Steve while he does it, he thinks. Some days they’re both so busy with homework now that they don’t even see each other at lunch. Steve’s absence from his side leaves a hole in Bucky’s stomach, gnawing into him. He leans into him now as a result, breathes his presence.

“I think it’s kinda nice,” Bucky declares, eyes scanning the ship. “You get a good day’s work in, earn some cash, build your muscles in the meantime. I’ll have the gals falling over themselves to get to me in no time.”

Steve snorts at that. In fact, he laughs so hard he starts coughing.

“Christ, Rogers,” Bucky admonishes. He gives Steve the cup of cider and Steve gulps it down.

He’s still wheezing, though, ‘cause he’s a punk.

“Yeah, Buck,” Steve says when he finally stops coughing and laughing. “You don’t do well with the gals at all. You only got asked out, how many times last week? Three? Four?”

“Four,” Bucky says, with the hint of a sulk in his voice. “It was a slow week. Though, Carol Miller--”

Steve squints at him.

“Isn’t she going with that guy I hate--what’s his name?”

“Who don’t you hate, Steve?” Bucky rolls his eyes.

“You,” Steve says. It’s almost too matter of fact. Completely unapologetic. Bucky colors.

“Sometimes I get the feeling you got lucky you found me at six and you stopped tryna make friends after that,” Bucky mutters.

“I could make friends if I wanted,” Steve says. He picks at the fried fish.

“Don’t you?” Bucky asks.

“There was that new kid at school,” Steve says. He’s squinting again, trying to think. “Bobby. No. Billy? No.”

“Yeah,” Bucky snorts. “Best friends, you two.”

“Whatever,” Steve says. He nudges Bucky. “Who’s the kid I hate?”

“Richard,” Bucky sighs.

“Oh yeah,” Steve snickers. “Dick.”

“Real mature, Rogers,” Bucky says with a long-suffering sigh. “Anyway, Dick  _ was _ going with Carol, but she broke up with him last month. Said she’s fancied me ever since.”

Steve quiets at that. He’s so quiet, Bucky thinks something’s wrong. He looks over at him and Steve is frowning. He looks unhappy about something, though Bucky couldn’t say what. Bucky’s about to ask when Steve sneezes.

“We should go inside,” Bucky says, suddenly on alert.

“I’m fine,” Steve says, stubbornly. He nudges Bucky again. “So are you gonna go with her? She’s...cute.”

“She’s fine,” Bucky shrugs.

Steve sneezes again. And then again. And then he starts coughing.

  
By the time Bucky’s managed to get his head out of his ass and take Steve inside, he’s breathing unevenly.

“Steve,” Bucky grasps his shoulders. “Stevie.”

Steve shakes his head, but he has to balance himself, one hand gripping the wall, the other at Bucky’s shoulder. He can’t stop coughing, the breath coming up short in his lungs. Every time he stops and tries to take a breath, he starts again.

By now Bucky’s nearly blind with panic. By now people have started to gather.

Steve grips Bucky tighter and gasps out--”Inhaler.”

It’s only then that Bucky comes back to his senses. He fumbles into Steve’s coat pocket, thanking God that Sarah Rogers never lets Steve leave the house without his inhaler. He grabs it and he’s an expert on the rest, by now. He gathers Steve close, one hand on his back, the inhaler tipped into his mouth with the other. He presses three sprays of the medicine before Steve’s coughing calms enough for him to stop shaking.

Bucky doesn’t carry him home in his arms, but it’s a close thing.

  
It starts, that day, at the docks, with that cough.

 

**october.**

It’s pneumonia. It’s always pneumonia. Bucky hasn’t ever known another human being to get pneumonia half as much as Steve Rogers does. It robs Steve of his strength, has him bedridden until they have no choice, Bucky and Sarah. They take him to the hospital, thinking he’ll get better.

Bucky prays that he will get better. He goes to Mass with his Ma and Pa every Sunday, prayers on the tip of his tongue every moment of the day.

  
At first Steve does. One day Bucky comes to the hospital after class and Steve’s awake. He looks like he has color in his cheeks, his blue eyes less cloudy with sickness. He’s warily eating something and Bucky drops his bag, rushes to Steve’s side. He takes Steve thin, cold, brittle hands in his and nearly breaks them until Steve winces, laughing.

“I think you’re being a little dramatic, Buck,” Steve says. He gives him a smile. It’s thin, tired. It stretches across his face unnaturally, like he’s trying to find a place for it and there’s no space left to give.

It takes every ounce of Bucky’s willpower to stay where he is, at the side of Steve’s bed. To remain still, Steve’s hand in his, to not upset their balance. If he had been under the delusion that anyone else had mattered to him before, he’s no longer pretending. He sits on the bed, by Steve, reaches forward to brush back Steve’s bangs.

“You’re doing better,” Bucky says with relief. What he means is  _ you’re not leaving me today. _

“It’s a good day,” Steve says, smiling up at him.

  
It’s the last good day he’ll ever have, but Bucky doesn’t know that yet.

  
Steve scoots over despite Bucky’s protest and Bucky settles in on the bed next to him. They listen to the radio and Bucky tells Steve what he’s missed at school. Steve whispers to him, in confidence, that he’s afraid he’ll never finish, and Bucky holds his hand so hard he really does almost break it. He only lets go after Steve agrees he’s being dramatic and there’s nothing stopping them from graduating together.

“Well, you’re a grade above me,” Steve says. “So I mean, technically--”

“You’re honestly the most annoying person I know,” Bucky replies.

Steve chuckles and rests his cheek against Bucky’s shoulder.

“Hey, Buck,” he says after a while.

“Yeah?”

“I did get lucky,” Steve says, quiet. “With you.”

Bucky’s throat constricts.

“I never had to try again,” Steve says. His voice is thick.

“Steve, what--” Bucky starts, but Steve shakes his head. There’s something sad in the lines of his shoulder, a resignation in his face that Bucky can’t stand to see, but also can’t unsee.

“I never got to use your pastels,” Steve says. His voice is so quiet, so sad that it honestly breaks Bucky’s heart. For the rest of his life, Bucky will think about this moment. He will pinpoint this moment as the point at which everything changed.

“You’ll get to, Stevie,” Bucky reassures him. “You’re gonna use them the moment you get better. We’ll go to the park and we’ll sit there at sunset and you’ll do the best drawing of your life. I’m gonna hang it up in our place. I know exactly where to put it, I’ve already told Ma.”

If Bucky feels wetness at his shoulder, he doesn’t mention it.

He never gets a chance to mention it again.

  
Steve deteriorates so rapidly Bucky thinks he’ll never be able to catch his breath again. They fall asleep together that evening, Steve’s small body curled around Bucky’s. Bucky presses kisses into his hair and tells him stories and Steve gives him a small smile, a tired smile, a smile worn down at the edges; it knows a little too much, things no one else can see yet.  _ I love you _ , Bucky’s kisses seem to say, but he himself doesn’t say it. There will still be time, he deludes himself. Steve will get better and there will still be time to tell him, Bucky repeats over and over. 

  
Steve’s hand is still in Bucky’s when his fever comes back.

Bucky’s still holding his hand when his temperature starts climbing, precariously, dangerously high.

Steve refuses to let go, even while his strength starts failing, the room crowded with doctors, nurses, a Sarah Rogers who looks so thin and pale, she’s a ghost of the woman Bucky knows her to be.

Bucky’s holding Steve’s hand when his organs start crashing.

  
Steve is holding Bucky’s hand when he leaves him. Bucky thinks it’s wrong, that he’s holding Steve, keeping him there, but Steve isn’t there any more. 

  
It shifts the world beneath his feet until he’s unmoored, adrift at sea, untethered in time. He loses his best friend when he isn’t meant to, shatters his heart in a way that can’t be pieced back together. 

The world is worse off for not having Captain America, but that’s a secondary consideration.  
  


At the end of it, Bucky is alone. He never gets over Steve, never lets him go. He tries to die from a broken heart, but time never seems to listen.  
  


In his first life, Bucky never gets his happy ending. 

It is the only reason he gets a second one. 


	3. second eye: 1945

**_ii. second eye: 1945._   
**   


Bucky blinks himself awake, a heavy feeling in his chest. It was a dream, he thinks, or maybe a nightmare. He has the vaguest recollection that he’s here by accident, that he’s supposed to be somewhere else, or maybe--some time else?

His head hurts. He can’t think.

It’s possible that he had a bit too much to drink at Steve’s bachelor party. He lurches up at the thought, which is a mistake, because the room swims around him, a blur of colors, a nightmareish cartoon. There’s a limb nestled into his side and he almost sighs out loud, wondering, briefly, what man or woman he’s come to bed with this time. He really should stop drinking so much.

A little, discontent noise, muffled by pillows and Bucky’s side, floats up to him. It takes him three seconds too long to realize it isn’t a stranger, it’s just his stupid, beautiful best friend. His stupid, beautiful best friend who’s getting married in a week to someone else, less stupid, but equally beautiful. He knows Steve deserves the moon and the moon, in this case, happens to be a stunning British woman with razor-sharp wit named Peggy Carter, but he doesn’t have to be happy about it.

It’s too early to feel so disconsolate, but he finds he can’t help it. He must still be drunk.

“Stop moving,” comes the muffled voice, still discontent.

“I’m not moving,” Bucky groans. He buries his face into his hands. The room is too light around them, the faint sunlight burning into his skull aggressively.

“Something’s moving,” Steve mutters. He shifts under the covers. He ends up nestled even closer to Bucky.

Bucky keeps from exhaling in frustration.

“What day is it?” Steve asks.

“How much did you have to drink?” Bucky accuses.

“How much did  _ you _ have to drink?” Steve retaliates.

“Promise me,” Bucky says. “You’ll never get married again.”

“Promise,” Steve says. He groans and shifts closer, again. He’s basically on top of Bucky now. “Come back to bed.”

“I’m in bed,” Bucky says. He ignores the way his stomach lurches at the double meaning behind Steve’s words. Double meanings he wishes existed anyway, but only really exist, unfortunately, in his own head.

“I’m never drinking again,” Steve mutters.

“Uh huh.” Bucky considers actually getting out. Getting showered. Washing his face. Eating something and not, definitely not, thinking about the way Steve’s skin feels warm against his own. “Why aren’t we wearing shirts?”

“Probably because we were drinking,” Steve says.

“Never get married again,” Bucky repeats.

“Never,” Steve promises.

Bucky slides back under the covers. Steve throws an arm around Bucky’s bare torso, nestles his face into Bucky’s chest. Steve’s getting married in one week. This should be weirder than it is. But it isn’t, it never is, and it’s Bucky’s own, terrible luck that it took him so long to realize why.

  
Peggy Carter is, unfortunately, stunning. Brown curls pinned back, large, sharp brown eyes, and bright red lips that make more than one man stop in his tracks. It made Bucky stop in his tracks, the first time he had seen her, but, well, she had only had eyes for one person. Bucky can’t begrudge her her good taste. 

They meet for lunch. Steve has a tuxedo fitting and Monty has undertaken what would be Bucky’s rightful duty as best man, but Bucky’s been to three tuxedo fittings already, and Peggy wanted to have lunch. He’s not allowed to refuse the bride-to-be, he supposes.

Peggy wears a deep navy skirt that cuts down to her knees and a simple white blouse, tucked underneath, that accentuates how small she actually is. She’s wearing bright red heels and pearls at her throat and ears. She’s impeccable. She smiles widely at Bucky, lips quirking up at the corners in amusement, because Bucky’s wearing sunglasses in a tell-tale sign that the bachelor party had been, perhaps, too successful.

She meets him in front of the cafe, pulls him close, kisses his cheek.

“James,” she says. She refuses to call him Bucky. Bucky would probably sound stupid in a British accent anyway.

“Peggy,” he says. He gestures to the open table outside and pulls out a chair for her to sit in. She takes the seat gratefully.

“You look…”

“Don’t start,” Bucky says. “You’re lucky I made it to lunch.”

“How is Steve?” she asks, barely hiding her laugh.

“Steve is--” Bucky has a sudden flash of warm skin against his own and he swallows thickly. “Hopefully it’s not too bright at his tuxedo fitting.”

“He distinctly told me he didn’t want a bachelor party at all,” Peggy says. Her lips are turned up again, a tell-tale sign that she’s amused. “I suspect he was being kind for my benefit.”

“Steve doesn’t lie,” Bucky says, maybe too defensively. He reigns himself in with care. “I mean, he probably didn’t want anything. But you try saying no to the Howling Commandos.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t dare,” Peggy says.

The waiter comes to the table, smiles at the two of them. He sees the beautiful, small diamond ring on Peggy’s finger--a ring Steve had agonized over, for months, until Bucky had rapped him on his head and threatened to kick him out of their shared apartment if he didn’t just goddamn buy one--and congratulates the two of them.

“Oh, we’re not--” Bucky says, flustered. He colors. “I mean. She is. I’m not.”

The waiter looks at him, confused.

“She’s marrying my best friend,” he finishes, lamely. The words fall a little flat to his ears. Peggy smiles, but he thinks he can see her shoulders stiffen a little.

Maybe he should have stayed in bed. Likely he’s still too drunk to hide how awkward she makes him feel.

“Well,” the waiter says uncertainly. “Congratulations, Miss.”

“Thank you,” Peggy says, kindly. She then orders for them, two sandwiches, side salads, and a generous side of bread “for my friend.”

“Thanks,” Bucky says. He watches the waiter leave and then it’s just him and Peggy Carter.

He thinks about the first time he met her, after Austria, after he emerged from a kind of dark and gritty hell that he can only sometimes think about and remember, even now. It had been him and Steve and then there she had appeared, a sort of red-lipped, vivid angel, who had stilled Steve in a way Bucky had never seen before. He thinks maybe he blames her for this, that after his own personal hell, when it should have been just Steve and Bucky, she had appeared, taken away the solid ground from under his feet.   

“I would like us to be friends, James,” Peggy says. Bucky’s taken aback, only for a second. It makes sense, that she would be this direct. It’s one of the things Steve loves about her, that she speaks her mind, that she would rather confront than wind her way to a half-answer. The two of them are alike in that way.

Bucky stares at the glass of water in front of him.

“Yeah,” he says. He swallows down a cocktail of feelings--awkwardness, resentment, yearning, bitterness. “I think Steve would like that too.”

“I’m not talking about Steve,” Peggy says, raising an eyebrow. “I mean I am, of course. I would like to be friends because I want to make Steve happy. But I would also like to be friends with you, independently.”

Bucky doesn’t know what to say to that. He used to be good at this, charming the dames, making friends with everyone, making everyone want to be friends with him. Everything changed after Austria. He came back physically, but sometimes he thinks he lost himself there, mentally.

“You are the most important person in Steve’s life,” Peggy says. The way she says it, softly, with compassion and understanding, makes Bucky think she sees more than he wants her to. He looks up at her. She looks sad. Maybe he’s just projecting. “You are the person he thinks and cares about the most. I know that. I have no qualms with it, at all. And I would never try to replace you. I hope you know that.”

Easier said than done, Bucky thinks. Then he frowns at himself, internally. He’s being unkind.

“I know,” he says. He’s not sure he does.

“Steve doesn’t realize,” Peggy says. Bucky’s stomach twists and he avoids her gaze, not sure what she means. “But I’m not blind, James. I’m quite perceptive.”

Bucky thinks he should explain. It’s just a boyhood crush. Just a feeling that’s been simmering in his stomach for the past eighteen years. Not a big deal.

“I know you don’t like me,” Peggy says, instead. “But you don’t know me. And I would like to change that.”

Bucky can breathe again. He’s good at hiding this, after all. He’s had eighteen years of experience.

When he lifts his head this time, there’s an easy smile on his face. Maybe he left a part of himself in Austria, but he can still pretend.

“Well then I guess we gotta get to know each other, Peggy Carter,” he says. “I plan on being in Steve’s life for a long time.”

“So do I,” Peggy says.

Is it a threat from either one of them? Maybe not.

“He loves you a lot,” Bucky says.

_ Not as much as he loves you _ , he wants her to say.

“I know,” Peggy says and she smiles. And it’s that smile, that softness to her, that affection she reserves only for Steve that makes Bucky think with this person, he’ll never be able to compete.

  
The bachelor party really had been against Steve’s will. Under orders by the Howling Commandos, Bucky had dragged Steve out to a bar and, really, it had devolved from there. Everyone at the bar knew Steve--Captain America! The man who had stopped the Red Skull! And Hitler! And Nazis! Everyone at the bar also knew of the Howling Commandos, to be fair, but it was a level of anonymity next to the notoriety of Captain America that Bucky would have hated, once, but wraps himself safely in now. 

“A few drinks,” Bucky had offered.

“I really don’t want to,” Steve had said. “I just want to stay home with you. Like we used to.”

Nothing could ever be like it used to, so Bucky had swallowed the hurt of it all and insisted Steve stop being a wet blanket. In the end, it was really all his fault.

  
What he remembers is this: Steve and him finishing a few beers together at the bar, loosening, laughing, leaning into one another, the warmth of the bar cocooning them both in their friendship and memories. It’s the first time since before Azzano that Bucky feels like a whole person, like the Bucky Steve used to know and look up to. Steve seems like he thinks this too, his blue eyes shining a little too bright, that shy, easy smile on his face. Bucky wants to take that smile, hold it close to his mouth and swallow it whole. The Howling Commandos show up before he can do something stupid and then it’s shots and more shots and an impromptu round of singing that no one asked for, but Dum Dum Dugan decided to start anyway.

Bucky laughs and drinks, flirts with a waitress, while eyeing the bartender. No one knows, about him. The bartender eyes him back, but it’s with a knowing look, because his eyes never stray too far from Steve. One or more of the Howling Commandos try to convince Steve to ask a dame or two to dance, but he just laughs, shakes his head. Bucky watches and smiles blandly, retreats into himself. In his head, he’s in Austria again, dark and strapped to a table, tortured and lost for dead.

“Hey,” a voice says in his ears.

Bucky startles, breaks the glass he’s been holding.

“Hey, hey, it’s just me,” Steve says. His eyes are still too bright, but now they’re concerned.

Bucky shakes a bit, coming back into himself. The bartender wipes the broken glass and spilled beer and Steve draws him away from the bar.

“Are you okay?” Steve asks urgently. His hands are framing Bucky’s face.

Bucky’s maybe a little too drunk now, sways on his feet.

“I’m fine, I’m fine,” he says. “You worry too much, geez.”

Steve frowns, looks like he’s about to protest, but Bucky hates that look on his face, so he grabs Steve by the hand instead.

“If you’re not gonna dance with one of these dames who been eyeing you all night, you’re gonna dance with me,” Bucky says.

Steve looks surprised, but then his shoulders relax. A smile steals over his face, one that, until recently, had only been reserved for him, for Bucky.

“Gotta teach you how to dance before the big day,” Bucky says, shouting in Steve’s ear.

“It never caught before,” Steve laughs. “What makes you think it’s gonna catch now?”

“‘cause we’re alive, Stevie!” Bucky yells, drunk. “We’re alive and you’re getting married!”

People yell, people cheer, and whoever’s playing the music obliges.

Bucky and Steve dance together, for minutes, or for hours, around and around, their bodies so used to one another that it’s the most natural thing.

  
What’s not natural is how at the end of the song, laughing and panting against one another, Bucky grabs Steve’s face.

What’s not natural is how Steve looks at him, asking without asking, how his tongue flicks across his dry lips.

What’s not natural is how close they are, how little effort it would take Bucky to close that space, to kiss his best friend.

  
At the end, what’s natural is that he doesn’t, that he watches Steve with unconcealed yearning, and then lets go of him anyway.

  
“You’re messin’ up your bowtie,” Bucky grumbles.

Steve’s standing in front of the mirror, white shirt tucked into his tuxedo pants, hands fidgeting with the bowtie at his throat. He’s nervous, Bucky can tell, because his nervous ticks are all there--the fidgeting, the switching weight from foot to foot, the little bounce in his step, as though he has too much energy he can’t quite seem to get rid of. Even as massive as Steve is now, Bucky can’t help but see him as he always has, a five foot four inch bundle of nervous energy. He has to blink and correct the image in his mind when he steps forward to help Steve out and has to look up instead of looking down.

“I always forget the height,” Bucky says, laughing.

“Imagine being up here after being down there all this time,” Steve says, wryly.

“The view any better?” Bucky asks.

Steve looks down at him, the few inches he finally towers over Bucky, a strangely tight smile on his lips.

“Not bad,” he says.

Bucky doesn’t think the comment means what he wants it to mean, so his fingers are more or less stable on Steve’s neck.

They stand in silence as Bucky adeptly unties and reties the bow. They’re close together, body heat mingling. Steve breathes in and Bucky breathes out. If he tilts his face up, he can see pale, blond eyelashes casting a shadow on Steve’s cheekbones. He represses a shudder.

When Bucky finishes, one hand on Steve’s neck, the other at his collar. He takes in a breath, shakier than he means it to be.

“Bucky,” Steve says.

His fingers are on Bucky’s face. It’s the reverse of that night, the bachelor party Bucky can’t quite remember, but can’t quite forget.

“Look at me,” Steve says, quietly. 

Bucky can’t. He looks at the bowtie instead, looks at Steve’s neck instead.

Steve applies gentle pressure, eases Bucky’s face up to look at him. He thinks it must be written across his face, how pathetically in love he is.

“You--” he starts and then stops. Clears his throat. Tries again, goes for nonchalant and thinks he only misses by a little. “You really love her, Steve?”

Steve looks sad, as though he could break if Bucky blew on him the wrong way.

“Yeah.”

“Nothing gonna change your mind about this, huh?” Bucky laughs. His voice sounds bitter to his ear and he winces. “I just mean. We were doing so well, weren’t we? The two of us, bachelors.”

Steve shakes his head. His fingers drift into Bucky’s hair.

“You were never a bachelor, Buck,” he says. “Always had some dame or another. I was always waiting for you.”

Bucky stops all movement.

He can’t read the expression on Steve’s face.

“What d’you mean?” he asks. His voice is barely audible.

“I mean,” Steve says.

He doesn’t say what he means.

Bucky wonders if he’s wasted this, all of their years. If maybe this wasn’t the ending they were meant to have.

“Stevie,” Bucky breathes.

Steve looks hopeful, then, his palms warm against Bucky’s cheeks, and that’s when he knows he’s wrong. That whatever he does, for the rest of his life, he can’t do this to Steve. Not now. Because Steve would say yes and then spend the rest of his life loathing himself for hurting Peggy.

“She’s lucky,” Bucky laughs out. He’s almost shaking. “I told her the other day. She’s never gonna get luckier than Steve Rogers.”

The moment passes, whatever it was. Steve looks stricken, but only for a breath, only for so long that Bucky thinks maybe it was a whisper of his own imagination to begin with.

Steve lets go of Bucky and Bucky misses him immediately. Thinks he’ll be searching his whole life just for the feel of those hands on his face again.

“Yeah,” Steve says. “I got lucky too. My best gal and my best friend.”

“Don’t be like that,” Bucky says. He steps away, which is about the last thing he wants to do. “Me? You’re gonna have to do a whole lot worse to get rid of me, pal.”

“I’m gonna grill hi--her,” Steve says, looking back at Bucky. His face is tense. “When you find her. The one who makes you go weak at your knees. Gonna let her know she’s got the best guy on the whole planet. Gonna remind her every single day.”

Bucky laughs at that, desperately.

He reaches forward, fingers in blond hair. He tousles it a little, messes it up from the perfect, combed state it was in.

“There,” he says. “You look like you’re ready to get married.”

  
The ceremony is beautiful. It’s smaller than expected, given how many people now love Steve, but it’s perfect for Steve, who’s only ever really cared about pleasing a handful of people. Peggy looks a vision in a white gown that goes to her feet, lace spreading over her shoulders and arms, a birdcage wedding veil screening part of her face. Her eyes are drawn dramatically, lovely, and she’s wearing that red lipstick, the same one that made Steve stop breathing. She looks extravagantly happy and Steve, in his perfectly tailored black tuxedo, looks like he’s been hit over his head by the good luck of it all. Mostly he looks so achingly happy, Bucky has to swallow back the lump in his throat. His hair, combed, but just a little messy, glints golden in the sun and Bucky lets himself think that Peggy looks stunning, but Steve looks like a dream. 

Their vows are simple and sweet, saccharine, but not inauthentic. Peggy tells Steve she’s always believed in him and Steve tells Peggy he’d never before wanted to date someone who had shot a gun at him. The crowd laughs and then everyone pretends the sun is in their eyes to blink away their feelings. Bucky is as happy for Steve--for Steve’s happiness, for Steve’s love--as he is irreparably heartbroken for himself. It’s an unbearable feeling, this tearing of his soul.

The minister declares them husband and wife and Steve takes Peggy’s face between his now-broad hands and she laughs into the kiss and it’s the most perfect thing Bucky has ever seen.

He does his job, remembers the ring.

He does his job, doesn’t give away how jealous he is, he thinks. How heartsick.

  
After, Peggy dances with him. He’s twirling her around, gently, and her hands are at his back. 

“Thank you,” she says softly, into his ear. “For loving him for so long. He tells me every day he wouldn’t be who he is today without you.”

Bucky doesn’t know if that makes him feel any better.

“Love him for both of us now,” he says to her.

It feels like a goodbye, but he doesn’t mean for it to.

  
Steve doesn’t dance with him, but once, when they’re together at the open bar, leaning against one another, he brushes his hand over Bucky’s, briefly. 

“Nothing’s going to change between us,” he says.

“Aw, Stevie,” Bucky says. He withdraws his hand, wraps it around a new glass of liquor. “It already has.”

Steve doesn’t know what to say to that. Bucky claps his free hand on Steve’s shoulder instead.

“Now show me to the bridesmaids.”

  
Bucky doesn’t remember who he goes to bed with that night. He doesn’t remember who he goes to bed with the next night or the next or the month after or the year. He meets someone, eventually, someone who’s not blonde and doesn’t have blue eyes, but she’s patient with his nightmares and they live a decent enough life. It’s never close to what he wants, but what he wants is happily married, so deliriously happy, in fact, that he hangs up his shield entirely. He turns down offers to reprise his role, to take part in a new initiative, watches the world change as a civilian. He withdraws into his life with Peggy, a happy life, with children and dogs and a picket fence, all of it. It’s everything he’s ever deserved and Bucky makes himself scarce because of it, doesn’t come near it because he knows he’s not privy to it any longer. Letters go unanswered and then phone calls and Bucky’s consumed by regrets more nights than he’s not.

Peggy and Bucky never do end up friends, but she doesn’t fault him for it. Heartbreak is a devastating, bitter thing.

He could have had his happy ending, Bucky thinks eventually. Maybe, if he had made one decision differently. Maybe if he had realized it sooner. Maybe if he had let himself die in Azzano. 

Maybe, if he had given in that night, at Steve’s bachelor party, when they were both drunk and without any inhibitions. Maybe, that night, if he had just chosen what was not natural, and kissed his best friend.

  
Maybe, he thinks to himself, in the next life.


	4. third eye: 1925

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A short and sad one, so another chapter will shortly follow!

**_iii. third eye: 1925._ **

  
In this timeline, Steve and Bucky never meet. Bucky finds Steve, cornered by a kid, nine years old and twice his size, on the playground, Steve with a fat lip, the kid with a sneer on his face. Steve with his stupid little hands up in front of his face, ready to go again while teetering on his feet. The sheer six year old tenacity of it all.

In this timeline, Bucky takes a swing at the kid, shoves him away. He offers Steve his hand, helps him up. He thinks he’s cute, this six year old with the messy blond hair and the angry blue eyes. But then, Bucky’s only eight and his friends are on the other side of the playground.

“Thanks,” Steve says, uncertainly. But then he juts his lower lip out. “But I coulda handled it myself.”

“Sure you could,” Bucky says.

In this timeline, Bucky almost asks Steve his name. In this one, Bucky almost offers him a hand, almost decides that this kid is funny, almost ditches his other friends to ask what Steve is doing, ask where he’s going, ask if he wants to go home with him cause his Ma’s making pie before dinner and he likes having friends over.

In this timeline, Bucky almost does a lot of things.

But, instead, he just shakes his head, smiles, and waves goodbye.

“See you around!” he tells Steve.

He never does.

  
He thinks about this moment, years later, when he’s had a thoroughly ordinary and uneventful life. When he’s down on his luck and wondering what confluence of events led him to the rut he’s stayed in, he thinks back on his life idly, wonders about that kid with the blond hair and blue eyes, wonders whatever happened to him.

Two blocks away, Steve has led a quiet life too. He never manages to enlist and dies of influenza just as the war is ending overseas.

Sometimes, when he’s still alive, they almost run into each other.

  
In the end, they never do.   
  
They are two passing ships in the night, both so close, gliding side-by-side, yet destined to never meet.


	5. out of time, pt. ii

**[ out of time, pt. ii ]**

  
He opens his eyes, his real ones, and sees, floating before him, the soul of a confused looking young man. Messy brown hair, earnest eyes, lips pulled thin as he surveys the destruction before them. He’s handsome and distressed.

“What happened?” he asks, voice tight.

“I asked you to fix this,” Stephen says in consternation. He rubs his temple with two fingers.

The young man looks back at Stephen, confusion deepening.

“What? I’ve never met you before,” the young man says.

“We have this conversation every time,” Stephen sighs. “You promise me every time that you won’t forget.”

“You’re making no sense,” the young man says. Abruptly, he decides he doesn’t care. “Listen, I don’t know who you are, but have you seen my friend? Five foot four inches of blond punk. Probably has a black eye. Maybe two, really, who knows? I feel like I’ve been trying to find him for the longest time, but I keep forgetting where he is.”

“Lifetimes,” Stephen says.

The young man raises an eyebrow.

“You have been trying to find him for lifetimes,” Stephen repeats.

“Yeah right. I don’t know how old you think I am, pal, but--”

“Age is a little touch and go when you’re out of time,” Stephen says.

“Out of time…?”

“Literally. Physically,” Stephen says. “You’re dead again, Mr. Barnes. It’s like I made a deal with a particularly persistent and rather incompetent devil.”

“You ever consider making sense?” Bucky asks, picking at a loose thread on his collar. “Maybe lay off the moonshine.”

“Are you going to listen to me this time?” Stephen asks, ignoring him.

“No,” Bucky says. He clearly has no idea what Stephen is talking about. But then he reconsiders. “Well, maybe. What do I gotta do?”

Stephen sighs, calls up his third eye. He makes the requisite hand motions and the summit grinds to a slow halt around them, time freezing within time. A golden gate of light begins forming itself out of thin air, edges curling up and around and around, a door, or an eye, also out of time.

“The deal is always the same. Your happy ending in exchange for Captain America,” Stephen says. He pauses. “Well, Steve Rogers. Your happy ending in exchange for you saving Steve Rogers, who is Captain America.”

“Make. Sense,” Bucky says emphatically, but then he stops. “You want me to save Steve?”

“In a sense,” Stephen says tersely.

“What happened to him?” Bucky frowns.

“Depends on the timeline,” Stephen says.   
  
He looks between his visions, then fixes Bucky with an exhausted look. “Fix your timeline, Barnes. You keep messing up your timeline and your timeline keeps messing up literally the fate of the world.”

“What’s my timeline gotta do with the fate of the world?” Bucky asks. He scratches his neck in confusion, but he’s staring at the burning vision cast around him and the golden gate is looking more and more welcoming in comparison.

“Everything,” Stephen says. “What year?”

“What d’ya mean what year?”

Stephen sighs. His patience is running out. So is the state of the world.

“This is how it works: you tell me when you want to go back and I send you to that year. You get the chance to save him, to fix this. You inevitably fail and end up here. We have this same conversation. Every. Single. Time. I should learn, but someone, somewhere, is laughing at me because you are literally the key and you can’t seem to find the correct lock.”

Bucky watches clips of time, fast-forwarded--the rise of a wall, the fall of America, the oceans drying, people revolting, people starving, people dying. He shudders.

“Steve can stop all of this?” he asks quietly, turning to Stephen.

“With a little help,” Stephen says, this time more gently. “He is the catalyst, Barnes. Without him, there is nothing else.”

“How do I save him?” Bucky asks.

“That,” Stephen says, “I cannot say. You determine that.”

“Okay,” Bucky says, after a moment. He breathes out through his nose. “Okay. Figures that runt would be the key to saving the world. Okay, what d’you want me to do, old man?”

“You could start by telling him you love him sometime within your lifetime,” Stephen says.

Bucky turns red and starts spluttering.

“I don’t-- I'm not--”

“Save it,” Stephen puts up a hand. “You are the world’s worst love story. And I have seen all of them. Every love story in existence. Through every single timeline imaginable.”

Bucky’s ears tinge pink, but he stops protesting.

Stephen turns his attention back to the timelines, deeply frowning. He can feel his own timeline flickering tenuously, just beyond his fingertips. He can only hold himself out of time for a little while longer at this point. The timelines are collapsing in around him and even his power isn’t enough to keep them apart. Without Steve Rogers, there is no Captain America. And without Captain America, there is no Doctor Strange.

“Hurry,” Stephen says, opening his eyes. The irises glow golden, time flickering through them, as through a vessel that holds the afternoon setting sun or molten lava bubbling inside a sphere.

Bucky looks at him, watching for just a moment. Then he steps up to the golden gateway.

“1941,” he says. “I was twenty four. It was spring and I think I knew I loved him.”

Stephen waves a hand and the spirals of the golden gate glow warm. They creak open.

  
Bucky takes a deep, quaking breath, and walks through.


	6. fourth eye: 1941

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Steve and Bucky find happiness, for a time.

**_iv. fourth eye: 1941._ **

 

**spring.**

Bucky finishes with a quiet, pleased noise, slumps forward onto Steve, boneless, sweaty, exhausted. Stupidly happy, if truth be told. Steve’s pointed ribcage digs into his own skin and he starts making muffled noises of protest under Bucky. Bucky laughs and rolls off him, taking most of the sheet with him. The cool air hits both of their bare chests, a welcome chill after how heated their bodies have gotten. The sweat and stickiness of an afternoon well-spent cools on their bodies and Bucky is so contently lazy that he can’t be bothered to get up, fetch a wet rag, clean themselves. 

“We gotta stop meeting like this, Rogers,” he says. The affection in his voice is unmistakable. He’s so, fucking happy. 

“You sleep with every guy you live with?” Steve asks. His chest is heaving. It always takes him a few minutes longer than Bucky to catch his breath. Usually, after, he turns on his side and Bucky runs his hand up and down his back, helps him come back down. Today, though, Steve stays on his back before turning, curling toward Bucky instead. 

“Only the ones who look like they need to get laid.” Bucky smirks at Steve as Steve shoves at his shoulder. 

The afternoon light falls softly through the crevices of the blinds on their window, shuttered carefully so no one can see. It’s stupid, the way the golden rays fall against Steve’s hair, making his face glow in the dim light of their bedroom. It’s an actual cliche and Bucky feels giddy from the beauty of it.  
  
  
It started a few months ago. The tension had been building for months, maybe years, without them realizing it. Steve watching Bucky go out on date after date, Bucky watching Steve fall asleep, restlessly, on nights he couldn’t breathe, Steve helping Bucky put on his best suit for dates and family dinners, his thin fingers resting a beat too long on Bucky’s pulse, Bucky watching the delicate curve of the back of Steve’s neck as he hunches over his sketchpad on the table, wondering what it would taste like if he brushed his mouth against Steve’s adam’s apple. 

They have a fight. One night Bucky comes back from a date too late, drunk, and Steve is feeling tired, recovering from a bad cold, and he doesn’t want to hear about Cynthia or Mary or whatever-her-name-is-this-week. He snaps at Bucky that he doesn’t want to hear it and Bucky snaps that he’s jealous and Steve tries to shove Bucky against the wall and Bucky flips them over so Steve’s back is flush against their door instead. His hands pressed against Steve’s shoulders, Steve’s fingers curled into fists in Bucky’s shirt. And then they’re staring at each other’s mouths and it all devolves from there rather quickly. 

They don’t recall who kisses whom, only that months of anticipating what Steve’s tongue would taste like does not leave Bucky disappointed. He ends up tasting like sugar and vanilla because Steve’s always pilfering cookies from the bakery he works in after his art classes. 

“Bedroom,” Steve gasps out as Bucky licks into his mouth, his hands fast climbing up under Steve’s shirt and he lifts Steve up immediately. Steve wraps his legs around Bucky’s waist and it’s almost absurdly easy to carry him toward their room. They stumble through the open door and it’s only the faintest memory of self preservation that makes Steve grind out, between kisses, “ _ Close the blinds _ ,” even as he’s being pressed down into the mattress.

“I don’t,” Steve says, as Bucky settles back over him, moves his mouth across Steve’s jaw, to the hollow under his ear, and then down his throat. “Want to get you sick.” 

He curses a little as Bucky stops at his Adam’s apple to suck on it, finally--it tastes exactly the way he imagined it would--his legs wrapping tightly around Bucky’s hips. 

“Don’t care,” Bucky mumbles, continues sucking.

“You will,” Steve shudders a little, “when you’re miserable.”

“Don’t care,” Bucky repeats. 

“But,  _ Buck _ ,” Steve hisses. 

“Don’t,” Bucky says, moving up and kissing him on the mouth again. “Care.”

“Jesus,” Steve mumbles, as though that’s a protest at all. 

Bucky puts enough space between their bodies just to unbutton Steve’s shirt. 

“Wanna tell me,” he says into Steve’s mouth, “why you’re wearing so many goddamn  buttons. At home.” 

“Didn’t know,” Steve says, leaning up into Bucky’s kiss, “someone was gonna be taking  them off.” 

Bucky finally gets to the bottom of Steve’s shirt and shoves it open. He breaks the kiss  long enough to stare greedily at the expanse of pale skin staring up at him.

“Your mistake,” Bucky says. 

He moves his hand to Steve’s belt next, but Steve stops his hand. Bucky’s about to protest when, using a surprising amount of strength for someone half of Bucky’s size, Steve shoves at Bucky’s shoulders, maneuvering him away until they’ve switched positions, Steve straddling Bucky’s hips, Bucky blinking up at Steve, red lips and all.

“I get the feeling you don’t lose your stubbornness in bed,” Bucky says.

Steve grins at him then, frames one side of Bucky’s face with his hand, leans down to kiss him.

“Good guess.”

To reiterate, it devolves rather quickly after that.

  
It devolves rather often after that, as well.

  
Steve’s taking day classes at art school in Brooklyn while Bucky works down at the docks whatever hours they need him. Often, Steve has his evening shifts at the bakery when Bucky’s home, sleeping, and when he finally gets home, Bucky has to slide past him to take the graveyard shift loading and unloading crates. Sometimes they go days without seeing one another, occasionally weeks. Bucky gains lean muscles, as though he needs them, grows taller even though they were both supposed to stop growing years ago, and every time Steve doesn’t see him for a few days, or weeks, he’s more golden than he was before, stronger and tan. It drives Steve insane. Steve, for his part, never grows taller or more muscular, but he has perpetual ink and paint stains smudging his clothes and skin now and Bucky spends more than a few night shifts thinking about all of the ways he could rub them clean under his fingertips.

  
It’s after one of these weeks of disconnect, when they practically haven’t seen each other for two long, exhausting weeks, that Bucky stumbles in after a three day stint at the docks. He smells like fish and oil, sweat, water, and other men--the latter, not intentionally. He’s so tired he barely knows what day of the week it is. It’s only when he shimmies open the door, which gets stuck on a daily basis, and he sees Steve near the window that he thinks oh, it must be Saturday.

Steve is wearing an old long, white sleep shirt that goes down to his knees. The shirt is twice his size, even with the sleeves rolled up, and underneath he’s forgotten to wear pants, his pale, skinny legs sticking out from below. His easel is set up by the window, sunlight streaking across the white of the canvas. There’s charcoal etchings on that white expanse, with the beginnings of paint where Steve’s started to fill in the lines. He has a paintbrush in his hand, his tray of colors set on the table next to him. His head is cocked, his expression peaceful, contemplative, while his feet tap against the bottom rung of the stool he’s perched on. There’s paint in his hair, a dark blue coating a part of his bangs, and across his face, a smudge of red on his jaw that he, undoubtedly, doesn’t know is there. It’s very likely he’s been sitting there, at the easel, for hours now. He’s like a delicate statue, cast in marble, and painted by loving, careful hands.

Bucky doesn’t want to interrupt at the same time he wants to come up behind him, wrap his arms around Steve’s thin middle, tell him how much he’s missed him. He settles for something in between.

He hangs his coat up, toes off his shoes, and crosses the room quietly, carefully. His touch is at Steve’s shoulder, light and cautious. Steve doesn’t react at first. Then Bucky squats next to him, his hand at the side of Steve’s neck.

“Hey,” he says softly. “Stevie.”

His voice is the first thing that’s made Steve move in who knows how long.

Steve blinks, looks down at him with thoughtful blue eyes. They crinkle at the corner as he smiles.

Bucky can feel it, in his chest, the warmth of this person.

“Hey stranger,” Steve says.

Bucky traces his face, thumb rubbing against the red at his jaw.

He kisses him.

“Oh,” Steve says, with a sigh, leaning toward him, like a flower to the sun. “I missed you too.”

  
It’s the end of March, the last day, in fact, and they both have the day off. Steve’s art classes are on break for the week and the bakery is slow and Bucky’s worked so many hours at the docks in the past three weeks that his boss actually tells him he’s gonna throw him into the water if he doesn’t take a goddamned day off. They have a little bit of money saved up from February because, miraculously, Steve hadn’t ended up in the emergency room even once, so the lack of income for this one week doesn’t bother them as much as it normally would. More importantly, it’s the last day of what Bucky has declared his birthday  _ month _ . 

“Birthdays aren’t a month,” Steve says, unimpressed. Bucky’s hands are under his shirt and his back is against the living room wall, his legs wrapped around Bucky’s waist. Bucky still hasn’t lost a single piece of clothing, although that seems to only be because he’s too focused on getting Steve out of his. 

“What’re you talking about?” Bucky says, pausing his ministrations at Steve’s neck. He probably shouldn’t leave a mark. Probably. Steve shudders under the graze of his teeth and he forgets about propriety immediately.

“You keep  _ taking advantage of me _ ,” Steve says. His hands tug Bucky’s shirt up out of his pants in frustration. “Because you say it’s your  _ birthday month _ .”

“You complainin’, Rogers?” Bucky detaches his mouth from Steve’s neck, pulls back to peer at him.

“No,” Steve says. “Well, kinda.”

Bucky gives him a Look.

“I’m complaining about the manipulation, not about the--” he gestures vaguely.

“I have never had a  _ single _ person complain about the--” Bucky gestures vaguely back at him. Steve starts slipping and Bucky’s hands quickly go back to his sides, lifts him back up to a sturdier position.

“I  _ said _ I wasn’t complaining,” Steve complains.

“You talk so fuckin’ much it's a wonder we ever get to the sex,” Bucky grumbles.

Steve finally manages to tug the shirt out, grins in triumph. He starts unbuttoning it.

“You trying to take advantage of me?” Bucky watches him.

“Obviously,” Steve smirks.

“And on  _ my birthday month _ ,” Bucky is scandalized. So, very scandalized.

Steve rolls his eyes, leans forward to kiss him. Still unbuttoning.

“I gave you that painting,” Steve mumbles into his lips.

Bucky softens, at that.

“I know,” he mumbles back. “It’s great. Guess they’re really teaching you something at that school of yours.”

“Sorry I couldn’t afford anything else,” Steve says. He pulls back a little, frown tugging at his lips.

“Are you kidding me?” Bucky asks. “I love your paintings. They’re all I ever want.”

Steve rolls his eyes, but turns pink, clearly pleased. Bucky hates it when he turns pink. The flush dusts lightly across his delicate cheekbones, which makes his eyes look even bluer in comparison. He brushes his fingers at the warm skin there, marveling. He kisses Steve’s cheek.

Then he groans at how much he always wants Steve. He latches back onto his neck, with renewed vigor.

Steve moans a little as his hands finish unbuttoning Bucky’s shirt, finally. He pushes it off his shoulders, then pulls Bucky closer.

“That the only thing you want?” he says. “Last day of your birthday month. Limited time offer.”

“Sex,” Bucky says promptly. “I want lots and lots of sex.”

Steve laughs, tightens his legs around Bucky’s hips. His fingers trail down to the top button of his pants.

“I’ll see what I can do.”

Just, really, deliriously, fucking happy.

  
They try to go on a double date once, after they start sleeping together. It’s Steve’s idea, because Bucky tells him Frankie’s been asking queer questions about the two of them with suspicion that’s maybe a little too close to the truth.

“We should go out,” Steve says. It’s a Friday night and they’re at home, sitting on the ratty old couch they rescued from the curb in front of an apartment building three blocks away, a week after they moved into their own apartment. The couch is lumpy at inconvenient places and hard as a rock also at inconvenient places. Every time they’ve fooled around on it, one or both of them had come away with abnormal muscle pain.

“Go out,” Bucky repeats, flatly. The radio’s on in the background, but their evening show’s just ended, so they’re sprawled in between activities, such as Bucky has his newest sci fi pulp in his lap and Steve has his sketchpad in his and, like every Friday night after the programs, they’re about five minutes away from jumping each other’s bones.

“Yeah,” Steve says. “With some dames.”

Bucky raises an eyebrow disbelievingly.

“You hate going out,” he says.

“I know, but--”

“No, Steve. You  _ hate _ going out. You’re miserable around other people. You’re miserable  around the dames. You make  _ me _ miserable.”

Steve scowls at him, nudges the side of Bucky’s thigh hard with a socked toe.

“Well don’t try to spare my feelings about it any.”

Bucky sighs. He puts his sci fi book down, grabs Steve’s foot instead.

“I’m sure Frankie doesn’t think.” He frowns.

“I don’t care what Frankie thinks,” Steve says. “But he starts thinking and then he tells Arthur and Arthur tells George and--your friends got real mouths on them, you know that, Barnes?”

Bucky raises his eyebrows and smirks. Steve flushes in response.

“I just mean,” Steve says. He sighs, runs a hand through his hair, messes it up in that way that drives Bucky crazy because no matter what he does it always looks like sex hair. “Maybe it wouldn’t be a bad thing for people to think we were still going out on double dates.”

It’s funny. Two months ago, Bucky would have loved nothing more than to go out on the town with Steve, his best pal. Pick up two dames who’d been eyeing him for weeks, share one with Steve, get dinner, and go dancing after. It’s always been Bucky’s favorite form of social activity.

But that was before he and Steve had fallen into bed together. That was well before he had realized that anyone else--those dames, some of the guys he’d gone with behind everyone’s back--didn’t matter at all to him anymore. If they ever had.

“This is a bad idea, pal,” Bucky says finally.

“I never have bad ideas,” Steve says, grinning.

“You got some mouth on you,” Bucky says. “To lie to me like that.”

Steve slowly sets his sketchpad aside. He has that look in his eyes that goes straight to Bucky’s groin. He gathers his limbs, crawls across the couch to Bucky until Bucky’s crowded against the other arm of the chair. He steadies Steve, one hand to the small of his back. Steve, for once, hovers over him, straddles his lap.

“Guess I gotta show you what else my mouth can do,” Steve says, grinning.

Bucky really, really thinks this is going to be a bad idea.  
  
  
It is a bad idea, obviously. The date starts out well enough--Bucky finds two gals they’ve taken out before, Florence Cooper and Alice Johnson, who like them both well enough, even Steve, who has about as much foot-in-mouth syndrome around dames as it’s possible for any man to have. Lucky for him, Alice finds him cute and funny and has, in the past, been willing to overlook the fact that Steve Rogers out on a double date is the surliest Steve Rogers there is. Bucky and Steve pick them up from their buildings and they go to dinner together. Bucky’s charming, flirting with Florence in a way she’s used to and obviously thrives under. Steve, for his part, does a much better job of engaging Alice this time than he ever has in the past. 

It starts going south when it becomes very clear that Florence wants more than just flirting. Her hands are constantly touching Bucky, on his shoulder, on his chest, on his neck. More than a few times, she leans in, red lips and all, leaving just a little bit of a smear near his jaw. Steve watches them across the table with eyes narrowed into slits.

Then they go dancing and Alice takes Steve out to the floor. She places his hands on her waist and it’s a slow number and she leans in, smiling at him in a way that makes Bucky clench Florence’s shoulders too tightly, makes her yelp and frown at him. Alice pulls Steve close, laughs at his jokes, fingers resting at the base of his neck, playing with his hair. She leans in closer on more than one occasion and Bucky’s stomach clenches in anger.

He knows, rationally, that they’re doing this so others won’t know about them. It’s for their own safety. Doesn’t mean he has to like Steve laughing at her jokes, his hands at the small of her back, Steve looking way more interested in her than he’s ever looked at anyone before.

By the time the evening winds down, Bucky’s pissed and Steve isn’t impressed either.

“My roommate’s out,” Florence says once they reach the door to her building. Her hand lingering on Bucky’s chest. She laughs. “You remember the way up, don’t you?”

Bucky’s only half listening to her. Behind her, Alice reaches forward, gives Steve a kiss on the cheek.

“Can’t,” Bucky grinds out, shortly.

“What?” Florence looks startled.

“ _ Steve _ and I have to go home,” he says loudly, interrupting whatever Alice and Steve are talking about.

“You have to leave?” Alice looks back at Bucky, also surprised.

Steve’s eyes narrow.

“We don’t have--”

“ _ Yes _ ,” Bucky says, emphatically. “We have to get ready. For tomorrow. You remember, don’t you, Steve?”

Steve glowers at him.

“Yeah, guess we do,” he says. He turns back to Alice, apologizes to her. Promises her another night.

Florence looks at Bucky suspiciously. Then she looks at Steve and back to Bucky. Her eyes narrow shrewdly in a way Bucky’s not comfortable with.

“Promise I’ll take you up on that offer next time, doll,” he drawls. His hand on her blouse, he tugs her forward for a kiss.

“Uh huh,” Florence says. She disentangles herself from him before he can. “Next time.”

Once she’s gone upstairs and Alice has left, Bucky turns back to Steve. He can tell from the way his fists are curled up that he’s livid. 

  
The walk home is silent, fraught with tension.

They walk up the three flights of stairs and by the time they reach their door, Bucky doesn’t know if Steve is breathing hard because of the stairs or because he’s only barely clamping down on his anger.

As soon as he walks through the door, he finds out.

Steve has him shoved against the door immediately, using a surprising amount of strength given his stature.

“ _ What was that? _ ” he bites out, angrily.

Bucky’s angry too. He’s goddamn furious.

“If you were tryna prove to everyone how straight you were, then congratulations, Rogers, job well done,” he snaps.

“ _ Me? _ ” Steve hisses. “I didn’t have my hands up some dame’s skirt all night.”

Bucky laughs at that, bitterly.

“Give it a few more minutes and I’m sure  _ Alice _ would’ve happily let you take her to her room.”

“Shut up,” Steve says. He’s turning red from repressed anger. “You have no right.”

“ _ You _ shut up,” Bucky says. He shoves at Steve’s shoulders. “This was  _ your _ idea.”

“I was trying  _ to help _ ,” Steve says, angrily. He shoves Bucky back.

“Help  _ what _ ?” Bucky growls. He shoves Steve so hard Steve goes stumbling backwards. Bucky pauses, stricken. “Steve--”

Then Steve comes at him with his fists flying and Bucky winces, raises his arms to block him, but there’s no impact. Steve just grasps Bucky’s arms instead, his fingers digging in painfully.

“ _ You _ ,” Steve snaps. “I was tryna help _you._ I know what those jerks say at the docks. I know even the hint someone’s queer and they start treating you like you’re diseased. How many people’ve they driven out by startin’ rumors? Beat them up so it looks like they just fell down the stairs? You  _ work there _ .”

Steve’s breathing hard, he lets go of Bucky, withdraws. He covers his face with his hands, presses his palms into his eyes.

“You work there so much and sometimes I never see you and I know what they’re like there.” His voice is thick now. “You already have to take care of me and they see that. I know what they say about me and I don’t care. But I do care about you.”

“Holy shit,” Bucky says. He reaches forward for Steve, grasps him by the shoulders. When Steve doesn’t move, he pulls him against him. “Holy shit, Steve, why the fuck do you think I care what those mooks say?”

They crumple to the floor together, then, Steve folding and Bucky coming down with him, to their knees, Steve still caught in between his arms. They’re both still breathing hard from quickly abating anger. Bucky holds Steve closer, presses kisses into his hair.

“I don’t want,” Bucky starts. He swallows.

“What?”

“I don’t want to do that again,” he says. He’s nervous. Maybe Steve doesn’t feel the same way. It doesn’t matter, he supposes. He’s never kept a secret from him before and he’s not about to start now.

“Fight?”

“Yeah, right,” Bucky snorts. He shakes his head. “Go on a double date. See you with someone else.”

Steve stills at that. He pulls back just enough to look at Bucky. He looks upset.

“You can do whatever you want, I guess,” Bucky says with a frown. “I’m not the boss of you. But I don’t want to do it. I don’t want to have you at home and watch you with someone else somewhere else.”

“What do you want, Buck?” he asks. 

Bucky weighs it, what he could say to explain. There’s only one way to make Steve understand.

“I love you, Stevie. I'm in love with you,” he says, helplessly. He brushes back Steve’s hair, fingertips at Steve’s temple. “I’m selfish. I want you for myself.” A pause. “You’re the only one I wanna be taking out.”

Steve blinks at that. He colors, that soft pink that makes Bucky want to kiss him until they can both feel the heat on their cheeks. He looks surprised, but not--displeased.

At least Bucky thinks so, until Steve starts laughing.

“What?” Bucky asks, with a frown. He shoves at Steve’s shoulder. “What’s so funny?”

“Technically you did,” Steve says through laughter. “Take me out.”

Bucky rolls his eyes so hard they might fall out of his head.

“You’re an  _ idiot _ ,” he groans. “I couldn’t have picked a bigger idiot to fall in love with.”

Steve starts at that. His laughter subsides and that shy, pink smile lingers. He curls his fingers into Bucky’s collar, pulls him closer.

“You gonna tell Florence you love me? Because she was gonna eat you--”

“That was  _ your _ fault.”

“I didn’t tell her to stick her hand down your--”

“Shut  _ up _ ,” Bucky says. He’s had enough. He kisses him.

Steve laughs into the kiss before he quiets, his fingers curling tighter into the front of Bucky’s best shirt. Bucky holds him there, frames his face between his hands, kisses him slowly, sweetly, with warmth. Steve softens, slowly, inch by inch, into his arms until they’re both breathless.

“Jesus,” Steve says when they finally break apart. He’s pink, nose to the tips of his ears. “Guess I love you too.”

“You only  _ guess _ ?” Bucky asks, incredulously.

“Yeah,” Steve shrugs. “You’re all right.”

Bucky looks displeased, so Steve laughs again.

“Don’t go kissing anyone else,” he says, seriously. He drags Bucky forward for another kiss. “I’m selfish too.”

**  
winter.**

  
They’re in art class when they hear about it, the war. Steve’s convinced Bucky to take a class with him so that they can spend more time together. Steve’s pieces are a work of art. Bucky once draws a cat that their instructor mistakes for a pineapple. He doesn’t mind. Sometimes when he reaches forward for a different brush, his fingers brush Steve’s wrist and the smile that appears a beat later on Steve’s face makes all of the humiliation worth it. Bucky wants to spend years of his life memorizing that smile, tasting it on his tongue.

Steve’s smile slowly fades as an alert blares across the radio in the background.

He’s filling in the lines of a painting of their brick apartment building, the same one they moved into together after Sarah Rogers died, the same one they’ve lived in together ever since. 

Bucky will think about this moment constantly when he’s overseas, boots thick in mud, the chill of the Alps sinking into his skin. The United States declares war and Steve frowns. He never finishes painting their life together. Maybe Bucky should have known, then.

  
“They’ll take me next time,” Steve says, the night before Bucky leaves for basic training. The letter lies on their kitchen table.  _ Order to Report for Induction _ , it says at the top.  _ Dear James Buchanan Barnes _ , it begins.  _ You are hereby notified that you have been selected for training and service.  _ Bucky had known what the letter would say the moment he found it in their mailbox. He had stood in front of it, envelope in hand, shaking until Steve found him, put a hand on his shoulder. Steve had known, too. He had turned Bucky around, had pulled him against him, there, in front of the apartment building, where everyone could see. 

Bucky’s arm rests against Steve’s bare waist. The blankets cover most of their lower extremities. His fingers play idly across the small of Steve’s back. He presses his palm there, marvels at how neatly it fits. If he had known before--

“Promise me,” Steve says. His eyebrows slant downwards, the corners of his lips also tugging in that same direction. His golden blond hair falls messily against his eyes.

“Hey,” Bucky says. “You don’t gotta worry about me. I got more lives than a cat.”

Steve snorts softly.

“Cats have one life, Bucky,” he says.

“Like I said,” Bucky says, grinning. He shifts over, rolling Steve onto his back so he can hover over him. “I got more lives than a cat.” 

Steve rolls his eyes, but it’s affectionate. He’s smiling.

“You’re not gonna forget me, are you?” he asks suspiciously.

“Oh yeah,” Bucky says. “I’m planning on getting a lot of action from the other soldiers in the middle of the European battlefield. First of all, they definitely love queers in the army. Second of all, they won’t have anything better to do, surely.”

Steve’s grasp on Bucky’s shoulders tighten. It’s both a gesture of possessiveness and anxiety. 

“I dunno. All that sweat and mud. Really hot. Bet you’ll finally gain some muscle.”

“Yeah, maybe I’ll finally be 90 pounds of punk,” Bucky says. God help him, it’s almost saccharine how fond his voice sounds.

“Excuse me,” Steve says. “95 pounds. I gained a pound last month.”

“I kept meaning to tell you, you been looking a little hefty lately,” Bucky says and he barely gets the laughter out before Steve’s shoving at his shoulders.

Bucky ignores him with a grin, catches Steve’s wrists with one hand, and holds them above his head. Steve wriggles because he can’t  _ not _ be stubborn about one thing. Bucky ignores him, leans down to kiss him until his movements still.

“Don’t do anything stupid,” Steve says, breathlessly. “They’ll take me next time and then we’ll be there together.”

Bucky ignores the sinking feeling in his chest, the protective one, the one that can’t tell Steve how much he hopes that isn’t true. It’s one thing for Bucky to be drafted, for him to end up on the other side of the world with a rifle in his hand. It’s another thing for Steve, for  _ his _ Steve, with his good heart and fierce spirit, all 95 pounds of him, to be beaten into discipline by the army. Not to mention how fast, Bucky’s sure, the cold of the Alps will kill him.

Bucky doesn’t want to think about it.

“Stop being depressing,” he says instead. “Let me enjoy my last night of freedom with my boyfriend.”

Steve’s face colors, the way it always does when Bucky is sweet. Bucky kisses his mouth, then his cheek, then his nose and his jaw. He kisses every inch of him he can get until Steve wriggles his wrists free, holds Bucky’s face between his hands and kisses him for real.

“This won’t be forever,” he says. “I’ll come find you soon. I’d like to see them try to keep us apart.”

“I love you,” Bucky says desperately, helplessly, and Steve smiles.

When they kiss again, they forget to be sad. Mostly because they don’t know they need to be. At the time, they really believe them, Steve’s words.

  
It should have been enough.


	7. fourth eye, continued: 1943

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They don't find it here either, their happy ending.

_**v. fourth eye, continued: 1943.** _

  
They send letters back and forth, for a year. _Dear Punk_ , Bucky’s always begins and _Dear Attorney Sergeant Inspector General James Buchanan Barnes III_ , Steve replies, because he's a little shit. They can never say anything too intimate, but Bucky imagines him anyway, sitting at a desk, blond fringe falling into his eyes, paint stains smudging his thin wrists, a frown on his face, but a smile too, because it’s hard in the army, but Bucky only tells Steve the good things.

 _Dear Punk, I barely miss you at all_ , Bucky writes. _I get beat up less in the army than I did with you. No one steals my blanket and everyone picks up their socks. I’d say it’s a pretty great upgrade_ . What he means, of course, is _Dear Stevie, I learned today how to shoot a man from 100 yards away. Turns out I’m a pretty good shot. I hate it. I’m losing myself and I’m not good at being anything else without you._

 _Dear Buck_ , Steve writes back. _Don’t think the army’s doing it right, then. Aren’t you supposed to be beating up some Nazis?  I’ve turned your room into a studio and I use your best shoes for my paint brushes. I got another rejection letter today. I’ve gained another pound, though, and I’ve been training at Goldie’s, like you taught me. Next time they’ll definitely take me. I’ll see you soon. I miss you._ What he means, of course, is--well, Bucky doesn’t know what Steve means. So he re-reads the letters over and over again, until the ink fades on paper, and he can hear Steve narrating to him at night, after long days when he’s lost another friend or taken another man’s life from afar.

It’s the only thing that threads his sanity together, sometimes, the thought of Steve, safe in their apartment, no nearer to the battlefield, where someone like Bucky can take aim at him from halfway across the field, shoot down his spirit with cool detachment and impunity.  
  
  
He throws up sometimes, his fellow soldiers rubbing his back. _It’ll get better_ , they tell him.

It never does.

 _  
Dear Stevie, _ Bucky writes. _Unlike you, I don’t go in fists firsts and brains later. The Nazis_ _get one good look at me and scram. I’m gonna make you buy me new shoes, jerk. You’re up to what, 80 pounds now? 81? Soon they’ll let you be a real boy! Don’t do anything stupid. Bet you miss me a whole lot, but we’re going to Spain next and I’m gonna lay on the beach until the Germans surrender. I might never come home._ By which he means, _I miss you. I hurt. I miss you._

He never gets used to it, taking another man’s life. It doesn’t matter that they’re Nazis, to Bucky. It matters enough that they’re men, that they’re alive one moment, and then, at the next, they’re not.

 _  
Dear Buck _ , Steve writes. _I met a doctor the other day. His name is Abraham Erskine and_ _he’s doing some real cool experiments. Some real science fiction stuff, like the terrible pulps you read. I think he liked me. He’s gonna run some tests. Imagine you came back and I was cured of everything. So you have to come back. Or I guess you can stay there and I’ll come to you, because I don’t think they’ll reject me once I gain 50 lbs of muscle. I’ll see you soon. I miss you._

Bucky folds Steve’s letters. He keeps them in his pockets. The rest of him is covered in mud, in the grime and sweat of battle, other men’s blood and a guilt he can’t seem to shake. But Steve’s letters, they remain pristine, white, pressed close to his heart.

  
They make him Sergeant because he’s good at this, his job. Who knew his talents were being wasted at the docks when he could be doing this, taking a sniper’s shot with barely a breath drawn? He lies awake most nights, loathing himself, and wondering if Steve could learn to love him again. His back digging into the cold ground, he traces a picture Steve sent for his last birthday under his fingertips. It's been a year and the only thing to warm him at night are memories of warm, familiar skin and paint smudges at the edge of this picture. He hopes that Steve realizes that the only job he’s ever needed to be good at is the one he loves best already.

 _  
Dear Stevie, _ he writes in his last letter. _We’re going to Austria. The Nazis don’t stand a chance. I feel good about this one. I’ll be home soon, so stop trying to enroll in a war that doesn’t want you. You’re an idiot. Love, Bucky._   

In the end, it’s that ending, that _Love, Bucky_ that breaks Steve.

  
Bucky’s regiment gets captured by HYDRA in the cool end of October, 1943. Colonel Phillips loses contact with them one week before the Red Skull’s forces take them, a gun to each of their heads. Half of Bucky’s regiment is shot on the spot, a single bullet to the head. He stares down the barrel of a gun and thinks about blue eyes he’ll never see again.

He doesn’t die at the end of a gun, but by the end, he wishes he had. In the end, he’s still thinking about blue eyes.

  
\---

  
He thinks what will happen is this: he’ll undergo Erskine’s experiment. He’ll be cured of his ailments, given a reprieve from a body that was never his to begin with. He’ll enlist, join the war’s efforts, find Bucky wherever he is, just like he’s promised. They’ll fight the war together, come home together. Be together.

It almost works that way.

Here is what actually happens: he undergoes Erskine’s experiment, but Erskine is killed. He is cured of his ailments, given a new body, a stronger one, one that he can barely carry himself, sometimes. He enlists and no one dares to reject him this time. He becomes Captain America. He wears a stupid suit and weathers the humiliation, because he has Bucky’s letters in his pocket and he knows he can end this, he can help turn the tide against the Nazis. All he has to do is find Bucky.

  
He does, find Bucky.

 _His unit’s been captured by the Red Skull_ , Colonel Phillips’ words rattle in his head, one week into November. _They’re gone, Rogers._

But how can someone be gone, just like that? Steve wonders. When he’s carrying a piece of him around everywhere he goes.

  
He doesn’t take Colonel Phillips’ words at face value, ignores a dozen commands, listens to Peggy Carter instead and steals weapons to break into the HYDRA base. Peggy’s fingers linger on his arm before he goes and he thinks he could have loved her, one day, if he had never known Bucky. If he had never held Bucky in his arms, if Bucky had never told him he loved him. He brushes his lips against the top of her beautiful, elegant, brown head gently. But he’s been in love with his best friend since he was too young to fully understand the feeling.

Maybe he should have listened to Colonel Phillips, in the end.

  
He finds them, Bucky’s captured men, on slabs of stone in Austria. It’s a dozen of them, hands and feet bound with leather straps and tight chains, skin the color of dirty and day old bruises. Most of them are dead, but a few groan into the silence, breaths punctuated by grunts of pain.

One of them turn to look at Steve with glassy eyes. It’s not Bucky. It’s a young man, dark, matted hair curling around dark skin. He looks too young for this, for this war. He looks at Steve as though he might be able to save him. Steve unties his hands with shaking fingers, lifts his head, but it’s too late for reprieve.

“Oh,” the young man says.

He dies with a breath on his lips.

Steve, shaking, turns away. That’s when he sees him, on a stone slab across the room, eyes closed.

He reaches him before he can think, his hands on his shoulders, on his chest, on his hands. Bucky’s eyes flicker open and Steve thinks yes, this is a person I can save, this person, who is mine.

“Stevie,” Bucky manages to murmur and blood bubbles at the corner of his lips.

Steve laughs, but there’s no mirth. He can feel him, fragile bones under his hands, a person he’s known and loved his entire life.

“Buck,” Steve says. “I’m here. Like I promised.”

Bucky looks at him, eyes clouded with confusion.

“It's me, Stevie. You remember, right?” Steve says. “I made you promise. You said you had more lives than a cat.”

Bucky laughs, but it’s a gurgle in the back of his throat. Steve feels it, thick brambles in his chest, the spreading horror of everything that’s happened to them, everything that wasn’t supposed to.

“You’re safe,” Steve whispers. “I’m going to take you back. We’re going back to Brooklyn.”

Bucky’s eyes slide in and out of focus. He tries to keep Steve’s gaze, but he’s flickering.

Steve wishes he could pinpoint it, the exact moment that led them here. If there was a single action he could have stopped, a single word he could have unsaid. It lays on him heavily, the guilt, the unspeakable knowledge that something is slipping through his fingers. Something precious, irreplaceable.

“I’m sorry,” Steve says. It’s hot in the back of his throat, his head aching. “I did this to you.”

Suddenly, Bucky grips Steve’s hand. It’s a sudden, last gasp attempt at strength. It’s a bird’s grip and Steve thinks he’s going to cry here, in an experiment chamber that’s been turned into a crypt in the middle of Austria.

“Don’t,” Bucky manages.

“What did they do?” Steve asks.

Bucky shakes his head weakly. Steve thinks he can see it flickering across his irises, the things they’ve done to him.

“You were supposed,” he rasps. “To stay in Brooklyn.”

He laughs and it’s an awful sound, a dying, wheezing cough that rattles from his chest and gets stuck in his throat. It surrounds Steve, crawls across his skin.

“You idiot,” Bucky sighs. “I told you. Nothing stupid. No.”

“No,” Steve chokes out. "Don't go."

“Hey,” Bucky breathes out. “Hey.”

Steve cradles Bucky’s head between his hands, blood and dirt smearing his palms.

“Love you,” Bucky says. “Stevie.”

 _Love, Bucky_.

  
Steve holds him in his arms, Bucky’s limp body cradled to his new one, a new one he’ll never get to know. Steve yells out, with the blind anguish only heartache can bring, his newfound strength nearly crushing what’s left of his best friend.

He cries then, hot, hopeless splashes down his face, bereft, his heart, and life, cleaved in two.

  
He forgets his shield when he leaves with Bucky.

It doesn’t matter. He’ll never recover anyway.


	8. out of time, pt. iii

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can say that I've officially finished writing this monstrosity! This should be wrapped up and all posted by the end of the weekend. :) I hope you've enjoyed reading as much as I've loved writing this!

**[ out of time, pt. iii ]**

  
The atmosphere shimmers around him in heat, the timelines close to collapse. Time and time again, he--well, that’s the point. The time and the time again are reaching the ends of their lines. He pries them apart with the sheer force of his power, but they’re wavering. The first and second eye touch midway through the line and he can feel it in his spine, the crushing weight of the sphere collapsing in around him. There’s a sheen of sweat on his forehead. He closes all of his eyes, pauses for a breath.

“I’m tired,” a voice says, wearily. Stephen turns toward it.

“You’re going about this wrong,” Stephen says. His voice is strained.

“I don’t know how to fix it,” Bucky says slowly. His voice is raw. He turns his head toward Stephen, blue eyes glinting with the unbearable weight of defeat. “What am I fixing?”

Stephen sighs, but it’s not contemptuous this time. He’s seen Bucky’s heart break more times than he’s ever wanted to. He gave up his own love once; he can’t imagine the weight of doing so over and over again.

“I feel like I’ve been in the same dream,” Bucky’s voice comes, wispy. “And I can never wake up from it.”

“I don’t know how to help you,” Stephen says, regretfully. He’s frustrated, angry with himself. If he could find it, the one good timeline, the one moment that could fix this.

Every time he sees Bucky, he seems like a ghost of himself. He’s a ghost to begin with, but that isn’t the point. The diminishing spirit affects Stephen in a way he couldn’t have predicted.

“What if it’s not meant to be?” Bucky asks. “Maybe that’s the point. Steve’s meant for someone else.”

“If you’re not meant for your soulmate, then--”

“Hold on,” Bucky stirs. “Soulmate?”

Stephen snorts.

“You’re a soul. You didn’t think you had a corporeal body here, did you?”

“You’re real funny, Mister.” Bucky closes his eyes tiredly. And then, “No, I guess not.”

Stephen says nothing for a while. The silence stretches out between the two of them, stretched taut over a future they can’t seem to stop--

Stephen pauses, thinking.

“Maybe we’re going about this all wrong,” he says.

Bucky’s eyes flutter open. He looks like he’s finally given in, fallen asleep in a body that has no place to age, not as out of time as it is.

“What if,” Stephen taps his fingers against his lips. “We’ve been trying to fix something that was always supposed to happen.”

“Gee, thanks. That’s not depressing at all.”

“It’s not depressing,” Stephen contemplates, “if it isn’t at the end. Or rather, if it is at the end, but that’s what makes it not the end. It’s a matter of perspective, see? We’ve been looking at it backwards.”

“I suppose,” Bucky says, still tiredly, “It is too much to ask you to make sense.”

“It is, but that hasn’t stopped you so far,” Stephen says, with a passing hint of affection. He tosses the stones and they fall as they have, except--one. The one still in his palm. “I keep sending you back in time.”

“What,” Bucky snorts. “You gonna send me forward in time instead?”

“Precisely.” Stephen’s eyes glint in something like triumph. “Maybe our timing is all wrong. He needs to become Captain America. And he needs to realize he loves you. But not too late. But also, not a moment too soon. Loss and love, it’s all finely balanced. Like on a needlepoint.”

Bucky pushes himself up on an elbow.

“You gonna send me to the future, Doc?”

“It’s after everything that’s already happened,” Stephen says. “Is that going to be a problem?”

Bucky considers this. Then he falls back with a sigh, closes his eyes again.

“Nah. I just want this to be over,” he says. “I want to find him. Steve. It doesn’t feel right without him.”

“It’s not,” Stephen says, kindly. “But it’s not right without you, either. That’s the entire point.”

“Will it hurt?” Bucky asks.

“Parts of it,” Stephen says. “I should warn you--”

He watches Bucky, watches the flutter of his brown hair, the lines around his eyes, too young for someone to have died so many times and still not found their happy ending.

“Yeah?”

“It’s not happy,” Stephen says gently. “Not all of it. You haven’t led the happiest life, Mr. Barnes.”

Bucky’s quiet.

“Do I have a chance?” Bucky asks, finally. “To be happy. If I go into the future.”

Stephen wants to say yes. It isn’t about the timelines, or only about the timelines. He’s seen this hurt on Bucky Barnes’s face too many times now. He’s good, at heart. Perhaps too good. Bucky Barnes is living proof that life is cruel and arbitrary. But also, maybe, that some good is worth saving.

“I don’t know,” Stephen says softly. “Maybe. Some day.”

“Hey,” Bucky puffs out a laugh. “That’s better than no day.”

After a moment, he asks, “What about Steve? Will he be happy?”

Stephen casts his eyes back out. He brushes Bucky’s temple with the tip of his fingers.

“I’ve watched you and Steve Rogers for many lifetimes now, Mr. Barnes,” he says. “There is not a single instance where he isn’t happy when you’re there with him.”

Bucky relaxes, imperceptibly. He drifts off to sleep with a smile on his face.

  
“It’s time,” Stephen says, eventually.

Bucky’s eyes open, his soul floating up. He looks surprised, as though he didn’t know he could do that.

“Hey, Doc?” Bucky asked. “What happened that was so bad? To me and Steve.”

“Oh,” Stephen says, sadly. “Too much, I’m afraid.”

“No more times,” Bucky says, after digesting that. He turns to Stephen, eyes bright, blue, steeled with determination. “I won’t be back.”

Stephen gives him a half smile. He performs the shapes, tents his fingers just so.

A doorway glows, wrought in gold.

“Say hello to Captain Rogers for me,” Stephen says.

  
It’s the last time he sees Bucky Barnes. For a very, very long time.


	9. the final eye: 2017

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They finally find a time in which they belong.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just the epilogue after this! I considered splitting this into two chapters because it's quite long, but I think I've dragged the angst out long enough. Time to give them (and you guys) some happiness. :)

**_vii. the final eye: [ 2017 ]_ **

 

“Are you sure?” Steve asks. 

After all of it, the Triskellion, Vienna, Siberia, the end of the Avengers, he thinks it’s blatantly unfair that he has to lose this too, lose Bucky for a second time. How many times can one person lose the person who’s always meant the most to him before he starts taking it personally?

Bucky gives him the sort of tired, self-deprecating smile that Steve knows intimately. It’s one he used himself, for years, when his body was too heavy with illness and he was too tired to keep holding it up. It looks wrong on Bucky, on the planes of a face Steve used to fall asleep next to every night. It’s creeping on him slowly, the realization of everything that’s been taken from them, what all of the intervening years have wrought on two people who had only ever wanted to be happy together.

T’Challa puts a hand on his shoulder.

“He has earned a warrior’s rest, Captain,” is all he says. Steve can’t argue with that. He makes himself watch the ice freeze over him, the frost covering his best friend.

He tries to accept it, that Bucky would choose to sleep, instead of finding himself back to Steve. Steve knows this, rationally, that Bucky has lost more than his memories. He’s lost bits of his humanity in ways he’ll never get back. He never had been meant for war. Steve remembers multiple nights in the Alps, holding back Bucky’s hair as he vomited, after he’d taken one or two or a dozen lives in perfect, single-fire execution shots from afar. He remembers taking Bucky into his arms, of thinking no war was worth this, taking the best guy he’d ever known. Steve was different. Steve was always angry, a steady fuel of his childhood helplessness and natural self righteousness as his guiding compass. But Bucky, he had always worn his heart on his sleeve and the war had punished him for it, almost brutally.

Sam tries to help. He distracts him. They keep off the radar. They tour Wakandan facilities and think about how to rebuild, lives as civilians. In the end, Sam has his life and Steve has nothing. He came back through a time vortex to fight a war that had never wanted him in the first place. With Peggy gone and Bucky under ice, his delicately assembled support system in pieces, he wonders what the point of it is?

  
Two bottles of Wakandan’s finest liquor later, he still didn’t have the answer.

“None of us do, Captain,” T’Challa says and hands Steve another bottle.

  
In the end, Steve’s promise to Bucky lasts one month, two weeks, and four days.

“Steve?” There’s a pause and Bucky’s eyes slowly open. “Am I cured?”

“I’m sorry, Buck,” Steve says quietly and he feels it in his chest, the deeply wound guilt. This too, he’s taking from Bucky.

“Why am I awake?” Bucky asks.

“I couldn’t do it, Buck,” Steve says. He passes a hand over his eyes and he seems to shudder from a weight he hasn’t let himself feel since Lagos. “I couldn’t let you go.”

Bucky doesn’t say anything for the longest time. He closes his eyes and his breathing eventually settles. When he opens them again, he looks at the ceiling calmly.

“I had the strangest dreams,” he says. “I met a doctor and we were running out of time.”

  
*

They go to London. At first it’s to visit Peggy, so Steve can re-introduce them.

“I can’t wrap my head around it,” Steve says, placing flowers at her headstone. “The Peggy I used to know and the Peggy I met after I got out of the ice. I missed an entire lifetime in between.”

Bucky watches Steve, reads the engraving quietly.  

“She would have liked you,” Steve says, after a while.

Bucky says nothing, watches the headstone unseeingly. He’s like this a lot, Steve finds. He holds himself so still, Steve sometimes thinks he's forgotten how to breathe. After a while, it’s been so long since either of them have spoken that Steve thinks he’s gotten lost again, Bucky, in the winding maze of his own head.

“I don’t think so.” When Bucky speaks, it’s so sudden, it jars Steve. Steve looks over, his throat dry. Bucky has his flesh hand passed over his eyes. He lets out a low, self-deprecating laugh. “I remember her not knowing I was alive, next to you.”

Steve’s stomach twists at that, a sharp feeling, low in his gut.

“You remember?”

Bucky shrugs.

“Sometimes.”

“She would have  _ loved _ you,” Steve amends.

“You sure are optimistic, Rogers,” Bucky says.

Steve tries not to hear it, in his own voice, 17 years old and laughing at his best friend. His stupid, charming, good-natured best friend, who thought the world of others, even when others never proved him right back.  _ You sure are optimistic, Barnes _ , Steve had said, so many times.

“Yeah,” Steve half-smiles. “I’m starting to have a reason to be.”

  
They stay longer than expected. Steve grows out his facial hair, a thick, nicely groomed beard, and a mustache that disguises him when his blond hair and blue eyes don’t. Bucky is stunned when Steve makes the decision, but then he spends a good two weeks making fun of the effort. It’s quiet, sporadic, a hint of irony. Once, it’s him just looking at Steve and laughing for two minutes straight. It’s never the easy teasing and laughter of their childhoods, but Steve often finds he doesn’t care. Bucky wears gloves everywhere. He doesn’t let scissors near his head, so they tie back his hair and lighten the color. He mostly wears hats and no one in London looks at him twice. 

They rent a flat in central London, a few blocks away from Liverpool Street Station. They have to get jobs, of course. Or rather, Steve does. He ends up getting a job at Caffe Nero, which helps fuel Bucky’s surprising caffeine addiction, although it pays about as much as it costs to keep the lights on and very little more. Sam helps from abroad, funnels Steve funds from an unmarked account that Natasha had given him access to, no questions asked. She doesn’t reach out to him, but Steve knows it’s not because she doesn’t know where he is, or doesn’t care. It’s her way of caring and that suits Steve just fine.

  
At first, Bucky never leaves the flat. He’s quiet and deeply nervous. He has nightmares most nights of the week and Steve is torn between leaving his bed to comfort him and letting Bucky have the privacy he has long earned. He mostly lays awake, even when he has a morning shift, listening to Bucky’s harsh breathing, his shouts of pain and anger.

One night, it hurts too much for Steve to bear. Steve knocks on Bucky’s door, urgently.

“Buck,” he says through the door. He knocks louder when he gets no answer. “Bucky.”

When Steve hears nothing but a low whine, he makes the executive decision to open the door. Bucky lies on top of his covers, the sheets twisted along his limbs. His bare torso is covered in a thick sheen of sweat, his hair plastered to his head. His eyes are clenched closed, tightly, his fingernails scratching into his stomach.

Steve is by his bedside immediately.

“Bucky,” he says urgently. He takes Bucky’s hands, still trying desperately to scratch. They struggle between them,  Steve needing to bear the entirety of his weight down against him, Bucky’s strength surprising even in sleep. He grunts, shouts, and then his eyes fly open as Steve holds his wrists down against the bed.

“Mission report,” he grinds out in thickly accented English.

“No mission, soldier,” Steve says through gritted teeth. “You’re home. You’re safe.”

Bucky’s eyes widen and there’s shock and something cold Steve can’t place. His breathing is rough, heavy, the lines of his body tense and rigid. It takes a full minute for him to come back to himself. It starts in his shoulders. Then it comes back to his eyes, the coldness replaced by something warmer--a simmering anger.

“Steve,” he says.

“Buck,” Steve says. He carefully eases his grip on Bucky’s wrists. “Bucky, you were having a nightmare. You’re okay, you--”

“Steve,” Bucky says, voice hoarse. He searches Steve’s face for something. Then he shutters. He wrests his wrists out of Steve’s grip and pushes Steve away roughly.

Steve moves back.

“Buck--”

“Get out.”

There’s so much vehemence in his voice, Steve nearly reels from it. He doesn’t manage to hide his wince.

“Get. Out,” Bucky repeats angrily.

Steve doesn’t apologize. He slowly removes himself from the situation, his own breathing heavy.

He doesn’t get much sleep after, but Bucky probably doesn’t either. He doesn’t have any more nightmares that night.  
  
Still, Steve doesn’t go back into Bucky's bedroom for a long time after that.

  
Bucky mostly spends his time curled up on their couch, always the right-most cushion. Some days after Steve walks in, smelling of pastries and espresso, he’s sitting there, watching something on television. These are good days. Mostly, he watches the news like a hawk. He doesn’t often engage, but if he’s in a good mood, he’ll tell Steve the latest atrocity from U.S. politics, completely deadpan, but with clear displeasure and a hint of morbid amusement. Other times, he’ll watch whatever show is on BBC.  
  
Once, Steve comes home to him watching Sherlock. Bucky’s body is tilted forward, his forehead scrunched in concentration. Steve doesn’t bother him, leaves his favorite drink--a salted caramel latte with two extra shots of espresso (Bucky has an inexplicable sweet tooth that Steve can’t seem to get him to quit)--and his favorite sandwich--the salami and grilled pepper panini--on the table in front of him and moves to the kitchen to do dishes. It’s halfway through the third mug that he hears it. Bucky throws his head back and laughs, from deep within his belly. Steve pauses his washing and Bucky says, “Steve. C’mere. This show is _great_.” Steve feels funny, a grateful twist in his stomach for this moment, that everything can be so changed and still there are moments when Bucky can laugh and enjoy an absurd show about a genius detective and his best friend. 

Then there are the bad days, when Bucky forgets to turn on the television at all. On these days, he will either sit on the couch, always the right-most cushion, still for hours, until Steve gets home and gently puts a hand on his shoulder, asks him how long it’s been since he’s eaten anything, or he will squat by the window, curtains pulled tight, body tense, looking out onto the street for a threat that, thankfully, never comes.

  
Steve is working a double shift, covering for a co-worker who needs to stay home with a sick daughter. It’s just past the lunch rush and he’s been on his feet since 7 am. He doesn’t mind so much. Part of super soldier constitution is not tiring as easily as normal humans do and anyway, what’s a five hour customer service shift when he’s been in a battle with every Avenger and still had energy left to fly a quinjet to Siberia? The experiences are similarly tiring in very different ways, he decides eventually, but at least enough espresso has marginally more impact on him than alcohol does. He’s cleaning the espresso machine, back turned to the counter, when he hears a familiar voice behind him. 

“Where can a man get a salted caramel latte around here?”

Steve stills, cloth hovering over a lever. He blinks and turns in surprise and Bucky’s leaning against the counter, ponytail pulled back through a baseball cap, long-sleeves covering his arms, gloves covering his hands, and a nonchalance that is both forced and relaxed at the same time.

Steve suppresses a smile.

“Sorry, sir. We’re all out.”

“You’re all out.” Bucky’s expression is carefully deadpan.

“Yeah,” Steve shrugs.

“How about a praline latte?”

“Out,” Steve smiles.

“A mocha.”

“Nope.”

“Chocolate cake.”

Steve shrugs.

“They’re right there,” Bucky points at the case. “They’re literally inside this glass case.”

“I don’t see anything,” Steve is grinning.

“You’re a goddamned asshole, Steve Rogers,” Bucky says.

Steve laughs, warmly. He leans against the counter, body slanted toward Bucky.

“How about a cappucino? No sugar. On the house.”

Bucky scowls, but he can’t quite erase the thin smile lingering on his face.

Steve makes Bucky’s cappucino, tells his manager he’s taking his break, and slides into the seat across from Bucky, pushing the drink and a slice of cake toward him.

“Thought you were out,” Bucky says, with a half smile.

“The guy behind the counter has a--” Steve almost forgets himself, but manages to smoothly say, “--friend crush on you.”

“A friend crush,” Bucky says.

Steve smiles blithely and Bucky snorts.

“Used the think the worst thing about this century was all the selfie sticks,” he says. He takes a big gulp of the cappucino. “Really it’s all the terrible terminology.”

“Oh I don’t know,” Steve says. He takes Bucky’s fork and picks at a corner of the chocolate cake. “I think it’s really helpful to know when something I am doing is ‘on point.’”

Bucky gives him a pained expression.

“Stop.”

“And if the group of people I spend my time with is closely knit enough to be a ‘squad.’”

“Steve.”

“How am I supposed to know if my subtle insults have landed if someone doesn’t mention how well I ‘threw shade’? Was that reference 'on fleek'?”

“I’m leaving,” Bucky declares.

Steve laughs and pushes the chocolate cake at him.    

“Eat your cake, old man.”

Bucky scowls at him, but the promise of sugar wins out over his disdain for Steve’s attempt at engaging with 21st century culture. Steve watches him closely, without trying to appear as though he’s watching him closely. Bucky has purposefully chosen the table that allows his back to be set against the wall, a tactically advantageous position for someone to spot danger before it arrives. His hand is trembling and Steve thinks it’s from nerves.

“Hey,” Steve says.

Bucky looks at him questioningly.

“Thanks,” Steve says. “For coming out.”

Bucky laughs shakily.

“I did it for the caffeine.”

“Whatever reason you did it,” Steve says. “It’s nice to see you during the day.”

_ I miss you when we’re apart _ , he doesn’t say. Partly because it's obvious and partly because it's desperate, given they live together and don't know anyone else in England.

“The view was getting boring,” Bucky says after a minute of silence. He takes a large bite of his cake, eyes glancing to the right of Steve, out the window. Then he refocuses. He gives Steve a wry smile. “And Sherlock’s done for the season.”

Steve has to go back to his shift shortly after. Bucky doesn’t stay for very long. It’s fifteen minutes at most and by the time he reaches the door to leave, Steve can see that his hands are actually shaking. He’s visibly shutting down.

He came out anyway, though, and that, Steve thinks, is a start.

  
He comes back the next day at the same time, 3 pm. Steve is wiping down the espresso machine, when he hears a voice at his back.

“So where can a guy get a salted caramel latte around here?”

He turns around, with a smile.

  
He comes every day and slowly, bit by bit, his stays become longer. First fifteen minutes, then twenty. A half an hour, then a full hour. By the end of the month, Bucky comes at 3 pm, on the dot, asks for a salted caramel latte, and by the time Steve is done with his shift at 5, Bucky’s waiting for him at his corner table, with a cautious smile and a half dozen stories about people he’s observed at the coffee shop, to share with him on their walk home. 

“Are you two--?” Steve’s coworker, Oliver asks him one day, five minutes before 3 pm. 

Despite himself, Steve flushes.

“No,” he says. “We’re just friends.”

“Friends.” Oliver looks skeptical.

“Best friends,” Steve amends.

“And you live together.” Oliver creates a heart-shaped design on the foam of a customer’s latte.

“Yes.”

“So you leave him for work, come here, he comes and joins you for the last two hours of your shift, and then you two walk home together.” Oliver carefully finishes the tip of the heart, pulls away with satisfaction.

Steve pauses in the middle of frothing milk.

“He’s had a rough few years,” he says.

“Sounds like what he could really use is to go to bed with a ripped, blue-eyed, blond-haired Greek God of a best friend--”

Steve has a violent coughing attack just as he hears the door open and familiar-sounding footsteps.

Oliver has a shit-eating grin on his face as Steve turns toward the counter, face tomato-red. Bucky raises an eyebrow and Steve coughs again, manages to get out, “How about a salted caramel latte?”

  
There’s something about the stability of it, being still, in one place, for one day too many. Bucky has a nightmare one night and Steve is laying in bed, awake, fingers clenched into his blanket. The shouting subsides and minutes pass in silence. 

_ I could help you, if you let me _ , Steve thinks.

To his surprise, there’s a knock at his door.

“Steve?” Bucky’s voice comes, quiet, hoarse.

Steve sits up immediately.

“You don’t have to knock, Buck,” he says.

There’s a pause and the door opens. Bucky, his bare torso sweaty, his hair a twisted mess, abject misery on his face. He plods into the room, sits cautiously at the end of the bed. Steve sits back to make room. Bucky pulls his legs up and sits still at the end of Steve’s bed, arms trembling.

It takes him ten minutes to say anything else.

“I can’t do this,” Bucky says. 

“Do what?” Steve moves forward cautiously. Reaches a hand out cautiously.

Bucky stares at the offering, wild-eyed and angry. Maybe more misery than anger.

Then his shoulders relax, minutely, and he takes Steve’s hand.

“Stay,” Bucky says. “It’s driving me insane. I can hear people in the walls. When I look out the window, I see shadows. I'm out of my mind, Steve.”

Steve doesn’t know what to say to that. He can’t take Bucky’s demons from him and it sits on him heavy, makes his chest tight.

“How can I help?” he asks.

“You can’t,” Bucky rasps out. He laughs and it’s a bitter, terrible thing. “You have to leave, Steve. You should have left me frozen.”

“I’m not going to leave you, Buck,” Steve says sternly. He squeeze’s Bucky’s hand, rubs a thumb soothingly down his palm. “You’re all I have.”

“Don’t be stupid,” Bucky says. “You have the Avengers. Just--apologize to Stark. He’ll forgive you. You know he will.”

“I don’t want his forgiveness,” Steve says. There’s an undercurrent to his tone, an anger he hasn’t felt since he was a sick kid. “I didn’t do anything wrong.”

“You hitched your wagon to the wrong horse, pal.” Again, that terrible laugh.

“Tony’s not a horse,” Steve says. “He’s more an...animatronic bull. With laser vision and a jet propeller. Not a good match for a wagon.”

Bucky snorts.

Steve’s tone softens. Bucky looks so dejected, as though every part of his body has been compromised by a burden that is greater than the weight of his strength. He runs his metal hand through his hair and there’s a moment, a look of disgust, that Steve can’t stomach. Steve reaches forward, stops Bucky’s hand. Instead, he tucks them back, the stray, sweaty strands.

Bucky freezes.

“I’m not going to leave you,” Steve repeats. Then, softer, “If you can’t stay, then we’ll go.”

  
*

  
They go to Morocco next because Bucky’s tired of the cold. The sun beats down harshly on the both of them, the colors of Marrakesh swirling around them. They find a small, red-painted house, an hour from the Atlas mountains, and spend their time between the snow-capped mountains and the lush greenery of the Ourika River valley. At first, the dense Marrakesh markets set Bucky’s anxiety on edge and they only find themselves venturing into the throngs sporadically, for ten minutes at a time. Then, slowly, Bucky unwinds, the bright Moroccan sun tanning his skin and his nerves loosening with it.

They go to the markets a lot, Steve talking to the vendors about their spices, clothes, fruit stalls, and pottery wares and Bucky shyly learning Arabic in the process. Steve finds out that despite his super soldier serum, his porcelain, Irish skin can still get a sunburn. Bucky laughs at the red-tinged skin at the back of Steve’s neck at the same time he rubs aloe into it, firmly, fondly. They walk through the maze-like alleys together, ducking under awnings to seek respite from the sun, people watching at cafes, sharing bowls of harira, plates of couscous, and napkins of ma’amoul and keneffa before washing it all down with mint tea after meals. Bucky’s hair grows even longer and he wears it down most days. Steve shaves his face clean and Bucky looks fondly at him, says he almost misses him looking like a particularly disgruntled bear.

They lean against each other on the steps of a library and Steve reaches next to him, runs a hand through those thick, brown strands. Bucky smiles back at him lazily, inclines his head toward Steve’s attentions, and Steve scrapes his fingernails lightly against Bucky’s scalp.  

“It can’t last forever, can it?” Bucky asks with a small sigh.

“I don’t see why not,” Steve answers.

He spent 70 years in ice and his best friend spent 70 years on and off being tortured, so he doesn’t see why they can't be making their own decisions now.

“At some point we’ll run out of money,” Bucky says.

“I made a lot in tips at Caffe Nero,” Steve says, to which Bucky laughs, loud and clear, and Steve’s heart reacts in a way he’s starting to become intimately familiar with. He looks down at his lap and smiles.

  
  
“I thought you were recovering,” Steve says. 

Bucky snorts, lets Steve get to his knees and crawl into the basket before he moves toward the pilot. He’s proven how quick he is at picking up tongues, because he speaks well enough in Arabic that the Moroccan man overestimates his ability, gesturing wildly, and speaking rapidfire. Bucky grinds out a sentence or two, smiles tersely, and gets to his knees, crawls into the basket with Steve. Their pilot joins them and the two of them stop speaking to observe the launch crew and the pilot speak to each other in Arabic, readying the fan and the burner flame.

Despite all appearances, the balloon starts to expand quickly, air filling its folds, the strings pulling taught, and the basket starting to pull up with it.

It only takes them ten minutes to begin ascending, their trust in the Moroccan pilot behind them surprising, since Bucky still can’t sit with his back to crowds or doors.

“You scared of a little height, Rogers?” Bucky asks. He’s wearing a loose, flowing djellaba, silver embroidery winding its way up the middle, a hood hanging at the back. His hair is tied back in a ponytail and there’s a smile on his face. The lines of his body are loose, relaxed.

“You know I used to jump out of planes for a living, right?” Steve says. He rests his arms against the edge of the basket, watches the ground slowly drift away from them as the hot air balloon takes them up, Marrakesh spreading out below them, brightly colored, vibrant, teeming with life.

“Don’t think that was supposed to be part of the job,” Bucky says. He joins Steve at that side of the basket. There’s a foot separating them. “Think you just like doing stupid things.”

“Like agreeing to get in a hot air balloon with my PTSD-suffering best friend?” Steve asks.

“Like agreeing to become a fugitive, go undercover, and move from country to country with your paranoid, anxiety-ridden, probably schizophrenic best friend,” Bucky says. 

Steve says nothing to that, although he does comfortingly bump Bucky’s left shoulder with his own.

“It’s metal, Steve,” Bucky says.

“You knew what I was doing,” Steve says. “Stop complaining.”

Bucky snorts at that, but it’s all in good nature. They watch the hot Moroccan deserts blossom underneath them, the sand bathed in peach and orange hues of the setting sun. They crawl toward the Atlas Mountains, snowcapped tops and green carpeted valleys winding around them. It’s breathtaking and heartbreaking in the same breath.

“Where next?” Steve asks quietly.

Bucky makes a noncommittal noise. His blue eyes glow in the sunset, trauma and deliberate thoughtfulness set against a face that used to express so much and has since been trained to say nothing at all.

“You said country to country,” Steve says. “Where are we going next, Bucky?”

“Steve,” Bucky starts and Steve stops him, puts a hand on his flesh arm.

“I don’t think you understand,” he says.

Bucky looks at him then, really looks at him. Steve’s never been very good at hiding anything from him and he’s not going to start now, over 90 years later.

The moment stretches between them, indescribable in a way that feels significant. Steve feels it in his chest, warmth crawling up the back of his neck. He won’t shy away though, doesn’t think he has the capacity to try.

Bucky lets out a low breath eventually, a small laugh.

“You never did figure out your bangs,” he says. He reaches forward, brushes Steve’s hair back. Steve’s cheeks warm and he looks back out at the mountains.

They say nothing as the sun dips low, the night sky spreading out around them, wrapping them in a lazy blanket of navy blue. The foot of space disappears and they stand, shoulder to shoulder.

Steve doesn’t look over, but he puts one hand out between them, palm up. An offering.

It takes a few self-conscious seconds before he feels another warm palm slide over his.

It takes another minute or so before Bucky leans in to him.

“South Africa,” he says.

  
*

  
Steve suggests an apartment by the water at Camp’s Bay. The beach runs up to the steps of the apartment building, pristine blue water just below, cliffs to the left, and Table Mountain framing them from behind. Bucky digs his toes into the white sand and breathes out, smiling.

It’s really Steve’s mistake that he takes Bucky around Cape Town before they sign their lease. They walk down Strand Street after coffee on their second day there and Bucky sees the colorful houses of Bo-Kaap and falls immediately in love.

His fingers curl into Steve’s sleeve as he stops him, halfway up one of the three steep hills leading to the row of multi-colored buildings.

“It reminds me of Marrakesh,” he breathes out, his eyes lighting up, and Steve knows they’ve traded in the ocean for friendly faces and a bright, colorful hilltop with a history of revolution and resistance. The water is a ten minute bus ride away anyway, so Steve doesn’t really mind.

They find a little blue house that a nice South African man by the name of Yusuf rents to them for what amounts to a pittance. There’s a tiny yard behind them and they’re wedged between a bright pink house and one that’s lavender. The steps down to the asphalt road are white and across from them, the other houses of Bo-Kaap stand in solidarity--orange, lime green, yellow, peach, cerulean with purple trim. Down the road is a mosque and on Fridays, Bucky and Steve can see the Muslim men and women gathered, dressed in white and other assortments of colors, kneeling to a higher power in the middle of the day.

  
They take a day trip down to Stellenbosch, drink their way through four different vineyards, feel a slight warmth in their stomachs and hands and cheeks, even though they’re super soldiers and should be immune. Their Airbnb is at the end of a small, winding road that leads them through trees and make them feel as though they’ve survived to the middle of a horror movie. 

“I’m not going to save you this time,” Bucky says, laughing, as they sprawl on the couch, warm and very slightly buzzed. Maybe not buzzed; maybe just happy.

“What are you talking about?” Steve asks. He shoves against Bucky’s shoulder, which makes the other man laugh harder.

Bucky smiles after he finally manages to stop, lets his head drift onto Steve’s shoulder. Steve lays his hand on his knee, palm up, another offering. Bucky laces their fingers together lazily.

“You know,” he says. “The timelines.”

Steve looks at Bucky quizzically and Bucky freezes, as though suddenly realizing what he’s said.

“The timelines?” Steve asks. He nudges him. “Have you been reading those awful pulps again?”

Bucky snorts, although there’s unmistakable tension in his shoulders now. He looks uneasy.

“They’re just science fiction books now, Rogers,” he says. “It’s a respectable genre.”

“They’re apparently making you rescue me in different timelines, so I don’t know how respectable that is,” Steve says. “Unless you meant something else.”

A deep frown etches itself onto Bucky’s features. He quiets, as though trying to figure out something he can’t quite remember.

“It’s nothing,” he says, although doesn’t sound certain. “I think it was just a dream.”

  
He’s more subdued after that, quiet as Steve turns on the television, trying to figure out South African channels. In the middle of a show Steve can’t quite follow, Bucky grasps Steve’s arm, tightly.

“Steve,” he says urgently. “Do we know any doctors?”

Steve frowns, turns to him.

“We know Bruce,” he says. “Buck? Do you need a doctor?”

Bucky’s frown deepens.

“I knew a doctor.”

Steve searches Bucky’s face for an answer, but his expression becomes more and more distant the more agitated Bucky becomes.

“We knew a lot of doctors, Bucky,” Steve says softly. “I used to see them all the time. I was real sick. You’d go with me.”

“No, this was-- I’d go with you to the doctors?” Bucky asks, momentarily distracted.

“Yeah,” Steve says. “You insisted. You liked to worry a lot.”

“Only about you,” Bucky says. He’s so assured of this fact, it almost helps him relax again. “I think I’d only ever worry about you.” He lets out a shaky laugh. “I always thought you were gonna die. I thought I’d die if you died.”

Steve feels the bottom of his stomach fall out. A memory--a cold train in the Alps, fingertips slipping through fingertips, clutching the side of hurtling metal as Bucky’s blue eyes fell away from him, helpless, scared. Bucky  _ had _ died, for him, but he hadn’t returned the favor.

Steve covers his face with his hands.

After a minute he feels arms tentatively wrap around him.

“I’m sorry,” Steve says.

“No,” Bucky says.

“It was my fault,” Steve tries.

“No,” Bucky says again.

“I let you fall. I should have gone bac--”

He feels cold, metal fingers pry away his hands, tip his face toward Bucky.

“If you ever try to apologize again,” Bucky says, voice edged with steel, “I will leave.”

Steve’s throat is tight with unexpressed feelings, an apology he’s no longer allowed to give. It doesn’t matter anyway. There aren’t enough apologies in the world that can make up for it, for letting Bucky fall, for leaving him behind. As long as he lives, he will never forgive himself for this one mistake.

“Stop,” Bucky says, reading his mind. He touches Steve’s face.

_ I love you _ , he wants to say, but Bucky is angry and the time isn’t right.

Maybe Bucky reads it in his eyes anyway, the heartache and guilt.

He tips Steve’s head forward and kisses him on the forehead.

His hand lingers on Steve’s jaw, a moment.

But this too, isn’t the right time.

So Bucky pulls away self-consciously, turns his head, and they watch whatever is on television until they go to their separate beds. Bucky’s hand finds its way into Steve’s hand again and they’re aware of one another’s breathing the entire time.

  
They shell out the money to take a cable car up Table Mountain, like all good South African tourists. Steve packs a little backpack of food and they wear good hiking shoes, an excuse to take the path back down the mountain, stopping to picnic along the way. They’re worried, for a moment, that the cable car can’t take their combined weight, but the car gets pulled along smoothly. Bucky stands close to Steve, palms pressed against the window. Steve leans close, whispers something in Bucky’s ear, and Bucky’s face lights up as he laughs. Someone takes a picture of the two of them from the corner and they’re not too subtle about it, but Steve doesn’t care, the smile he’s wearing on his face is so soft and fond. 

They get to the top of the mountain, shuffle out from the car behind a group of tourists. No one bothers them and no one stops Steve from brushing his hand against Bucky’s, no one mentions it when Bucky laces his fingers through Steve’s.

They walk the rocky paths around the top of the mountain, stopping sporadically at edges where Cape Town lays spread out underneath them, sprawling, majestic. The sky is a deep, clear blue, clouds rolling miles away, the sun high enough to illuminate the water lapping at the edges of the city, but not so high they’re blinded. It’s the perfect day.

“This seems familiar, somehow,” Bucky says quietly.

“We’ve been on a mountain before,” Steve says. “It was a long time ago.”

“During the war,” Bucky says after a moment of thought.

“Do you remember any of it?” Steve asks.

Bucky says nothing for a moment. And then a minute.

“Enough,” he says and lets Steve’s hand go to turn away from the view, walks down the path after a tourist couple and their tiny, two year old daughter.

  
Steve leaves Bucky for five minutes to step inside the cafe nestled into the middle of the flat, rocky mountaintop. He stands behind a mother and daughter who pay no attention to him. He smiles, runs fingers through his hair, marvels that he doesn’t have to wear a cap here, that there are no expectations he be anything more than a large, anonymous tourist. He steps up to the counter, orders two coffees and two pastries. He hands over just enough Rand to cover the food and gives the worker a generous tip besides. He dumps in a bunch of cream into Bucky’s cup and four sugars, which he doesn’t strictly approve of, but it’s a crisp, beautiful day atop a mountain and Steve’s in a giving mood. He takes his own coffee black and bitter. 

When he finally steps out, he scans the flat top around him, the dark grey rock jutted here and there with greenery. He frowns because he doesn’t see Bucky at first and Bucky, all 250 pounds of muscle and metal arm, is almost impossible to miss even if Steve didn’t have a hyperawareness of him at all times. He tries not to feel the fluttering of nerves in his stomach, the light tendrils of panic pricking at underlying anxiety that any given moment Bucky will revert, that he’ll become the Winter Soldier and he’ll disappear again, for years, like he did last time. After all this time, Steve doesn’t think he could do it, lose Bucky again.

“Excuse me,” Steve stops the tourist family with the toddler halfway down the path from the cafe. “Have you seen my friend? I was with him a little earlier. About my size, brown hair in a bun?”

The mother and father shake their heads apologetically, but the little girl lets out a little shriek. She points in a general direction.

“Cry,” she says. “Sad.”

Steve takes his cues from the toddler and sure enough he can see a brown head peeking out from behind a crag of rock, hunched down, almost out of sight. Steve’s stomach clenches and he almost knows what he finds before he finds it.

He sets the coffee and pastries down, crouches next to Bucky.

“Buck,” he says softly. “Hey. Talk to me.”

Bucky’s crouched by the rock, his body hunched into itself. His hands are up by his ears, his eyes scrunched closed, his breathing shallow and erratic. His shoulders are so tense, they’re liable to snap at any moment.

Steve recognizes this for what it is, an anxiety attack, and he’s careful not to so much as breathe too loudly.

“Bucky?” he asks, still softly. “Hey, can you hear me?”

Bucky’s breathing gets faster, almost like he can’t catch his breath. He shakes his head, hands still clamped down over his ears.

Steve puts a hand on his shoulder carefully, moves until he’s crouched in front of Bucky. He takes Bucky’s hands away from his ears, places both hands on his own chest.

Bucky’s eyes fly open, wide, panicked.

“Hey,” Steve says soothingly. “It’s okay. It’s just me. It’s just Steve. Do you recognize me?”

Bucky doesn’t say anything. He opens his mouth and closes it. His breathing gets faster. He’s wound like a coil, ready to break.

Steve puts his hands to either side of Bucky’s face, looks directly into his eyes.

“Come on. Breathe with me, pal,” he says and takes in a deep, exaggerated breath.

At first Bucky seems nonresponsive. Steve takes another breath in, slow and steady. He lets it out, just as evenly. Bucky’s hands move with his breathing, rising and falling as Steve’s chest does.

Then slowly, after a few excruciating moments, Bucky begins to breathe in tandem with him.

They sit like that, crouched, Bucky’s hands on Steve’s chest, Steve’s hands on his face, for minutes, until the light slowly comes back into Bucky’s eyes.

He takes a shaky breath in and lets it out.

“Steve?”

“Welcome back, Buck,” Steve says. He doesn’t let go.

“I couldn’t shake it,” Bucky says. He’s trembling, his voice wavering.

“Couldn’t shake what?” Steve asks.

“The dream,” Bucky says. He closes his eyes. “No. Memory. We were on the Alps again. I shot Nazis. I shot so many people, Steve.”

“It was the war, Bucky,” Steve says quietly. “We all did things we weren’t so proud of.”

“I didn’t stop though, did I?” Bucky laughs, wounded. “I killed so many people then and then I continued killing people. They’ll never let me sleep, the ghosts.”

Steve’s chest constricts, his throat tight and hot with repressed feeling.

“It wasn’t your fault,” Steve says.

“It’s always someone’s fault, Steve,” Bucky says. He moves his hand away from Steve, covers his face instead. “People die, someone caused it. Usually me. I killed so many people.”

Steve wishes he could take it from him, this guilt. The heavy burden of the things he’s done that he can never forget, that he’ll never be able to erase.

“Do you think you could love me again?” Bucky asks, then freezes. He laughs. “I don’t know why I asked that, but I’ve been thinking it for so long.”

“Oh Buck,” Steve says. He pulls Bucky’s hands away from his face, pulls him close, pulls him into his arms. He wraps Bucky up then, all 250 lbs of muscle in 250 lbs of muscle, his arms around Bucky’s thick back, pressing kisses to the top of his head. “God, when did I ever stop?”

It’s not an admission, not really, because they might be talking about the same thing, but they might not. Either way, Bucky trembles in Steve’s arms for longer than he would otherwise, the memories of wars and the Alps, a single shot from behind the barrel of a long rifle, dragging across the back of his eyelids.

By the time he finally draws away, the light has fallen low and a chill has descended on the top of Table Mountain.

Bucky doesn’t find his redemption on top of that mountain, just as he never found his redemption on the top of the Alps nor at the bottom. But Steve finds something he wasn’t aware he had lost and as they cross the mountain to hike back down, he keeps a close eye on Bucky’s back and thinks if he promises Bucky anything, it’s that he’ll never have to face those ghosts alone again.

  
The nightmares that night are the worst they have been since Siberia. The first few nights after they had left Zemo and Tony behind, Bucky could barely sleep more than ten consecutive minutes without being wrecked by his inner demons. He had eventually settled as much as he could, particularly after Steve took him back out of the ice, his nightmares making appearances a few times a week, but never quite as violently. Now Steve lies awake in his own room, hearing the grunts of pain, the unintelligible shouts of anger and fear. It takes an untoward amount of self-restraint to not cross his room, to not wrest open the door to Bucky’s without his consent. His stomach clenches as he hears a gasp from Bucky’s room, a strangled scream, a groan of pain. The images swirl through Steve’s head, what torture Bucky must have undergone that even now, his subconscious is strangling him at night.

He lasts up until the moment he hears a crash and then he’s up, out of bed within a second, through his door and into Bucky’s room. Bucky’s still in bed, his eyes tightly closed. His blankets are tangled around his ankles, a sheen of sweat covering his bare body and forehead. His flesh arm is swinging around at something invisible above him, while his metal arm has been thrown toward his bedside table, where it hit the lamp that went crashing to the ground. His metal hand closes around the edge of the bedside table, his fingers crushing the wood underneath. Bucky’s trying not to scream, but Steve can see his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down furiously with the barest hint of suppression. 

Steve gets to him before he loses that battle.

“Buck,” Steve says. This time he’s more careful. He grabs Bucky’s metal wrist and anticipates as the flesh hand comes swinging at him. They struggle against each other, sleeping super soldier with one who’s fully awake. Steve uses almost the entirety of his strength to pin both of Bucky’s arms to his sides, feels guilty almost immediately as it makes Bucky shout out in pain. His struggling intensifies, his legs thrashing, his torso unable to keep still.

" _B_ _ucky_ ,” Steve says, louder. “Hey.  _ Hey _ , it’s me. It’s Steve. You have to wake up. You have to come back to me.”

If Bucky hears him, Steve can’t tell, because he keeps grunting, shouting, keeps trying to struggle out of Steve’s grip as Steve continues to apply more and more pressure until, suddenly, Bucky lets out a sudden moan and slackens under Steve’s strength. His eyes flicker open almost immediately.

He doesn’t recognize him, not for nearly a minute. It’s clear in his eyes, the fear in them that wipes away to a controlled blankness, as though Bucky is willing himself to be as impassive as possible, a defense mechanism against whatever is to come. Steve doesn’t let him go, knowing Bucky will attack him the moment he relaxes, but it’s a close thing, because he can’t stand it, seeing how carefully he holds himself just so he won’t be hurt.

“Oh Buck,” Steve says, softer this time. “I would rather die than hurt you.”

It’s only then, only after confusion and suspicion pass through his eyes, that Bucky softens. He takes in a deep, rattling breath, and licks his dry lips in confusion.

“Steve,” he says.

“Yeah,” Steve agrees.

Bucky closes his eyes, takes in another breath, and then opens them. The look in his eyes when he does is indescribable. Steve couldn’t capture it if he tried and he thinks it would break his heart to do so if he could.

“Did I hurt you?” Bucky asks, voice a little too dull.

“No, of course not,” Steve says. “Can I let you go or are you going to take a swing at me?”

Bucky pauses. Then, minutely, he shakes his head.

Steve lets go of his wrists cautiously, but Bucky doesn’t move. When he does, it’s just to flex his wrists.

“Thought I told you to leave,” Bucky says, after a while. There’s no venom to his words, though, just a bone-deep weariness.

“I did,” Steve says. “Left you for a long time. You about ready to stop needing space from me?”

Bucky says nothing to that for a full two minutes. Then he laughs, shakily.

“I don’t want to hurt you, Stevie,” he says. “I don’t want you to see me like this.”

“What, you can see me in hospital clothes, snot running down my face, and I can’t handle you thrashing about a little?” Steve’s voice is soft, his expression gentle.

“Gotta look my best for my best guy,” Bucky says. He’s so tired his words are slurring. Steve knows he doesn’t know what he’s saying, but it makes his chest constrict anyway.

“If you want me to leave I will,” Steve says eventually. He doesn’t look at Bucky, looks instead at his own hands.

Bucky doesn’t answer immediately. When he does, he’s shifted up, sitting in bed. He gathers the sheets to cover himself as much as he can.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” Bucky repeats.

“I'm a tough guy to hurt. And that’s not what I asked,” Steve says. When Bucky doesn’t reply, he stands up, unwillingly. He bends, picks up the lamp and puts it back on the bedside table. “Goodnight.”

He’s nearly to the door before Bucky says,

“Don’t go.”

Steve slows, hand on the doorframe.

“I don’t want to be alone anymore,” Bucky says. “Don’t go.”

  
Bucky takes a shower and Steve changes the sheets. By the time Bucky reemerges, Steve’s sitting on the edge of the bed, the opposite side from where Bucky was lying. Bucky’s changed into sweats and a loose t-shirt. His hair wet, curls at the back of his neck. He looks calm, even shy.

Steve smiles at him, offers a hand.

Bucky comes to him, stands in between his legs. Steve wraps his arms around Bucky’s middle, leans his forehead against his stomach.

It takes him a moment, but then Bucky relaxes too, curls his arms around Steve’s shoulders.

They stand there like that, leaning against one another, drawing on one another for support, for minutes. Then Steve draws away, with a smile.

“Come to bed.”

Bucky doesn’t have nightmares for the rest of the night. In fact, they both sleep deeply and late into the next day, Bucky curled into Steve’s chest, Steve’s arm around him, protecting him from his inner demons, just like he promised.

 

It changes, after that. It’s subtle, in a way, and glaringly obvious in another way. Bucky doesn’t have very many things, but they fit them into the empty drawers next to Steve’s own things and Steve finds that Bucky’s stolen his sweatshirts more often than not. When Steve asks about this, Bucky tugs on the hood strings, gives him a shy smile, tells him he likes that they smell like him. They sleep in the same bed, like they used to, except Steve’s no longer sick and small and Bucky holds onto Steve instead of the other way around. Bucky’s nightmares lessen when Steve’s there with him and on the few nights he tenses anyway, Steve’s hand on his back chases his terrors away. 

They visit Camp’s Bay, the sand between their toes, the blue of the South Atlantic deep and clear to the edge of the horizon. Steve lowers himself to the sand, spreads his legs out in front of him, and Bucky drops down next to him, fits into his side in a way that shouldn’t be possible, but feels as natural as breathing.

Steve presses a kiss to Bucky’s flesh shoulder and Bucky sighs, smiling.  

“Were we like this before?” he asks.

“Like what?” Steve says.

Bucky struggles with the wording. Eventually he turns his head toward Steve, coloring a little.

“Happy.”

Warmth pools in Steve’s stomach at that and he can’t help but return Bucky’s look, bright and soft.

“You’re happy?”

“I think so,” Bucky admits. “I’d forgotten what it felt like.”

Steve kisses his shoulder again.

“Sometimes,” he says. “It was hard, but we made do. We had our good days and bad days, just like everyone else.”

“You were sick a lot,” Bucky says.

“All the time,” Steve answers.

“And we were poor,” Bucky remembers.

“Dirt poor,” Steve says, smiling. “We never had enough blankets or proper shoes or heat or milk.”

“But we were happy,” Bucky says. He sounds surer of himself now.

“Yeah, Buck,” Steve says. “We were happy.”

Bucky breathes out, like a weight’s being lifted from his shoulders. They watch the waves lap up against the sand for a while, the sun moving across the sky. A seagull pecks at dirty shells and a child and his mother walk near the water.

“Hey, Stevie,” Bucky says, after a while. His shoulders are just the barest hint of tense.

“Yeah?”

Bucky worries at his lips as though nervous. Then he exhales.

“You ever kiss me?”

Steve startles at that. He almost blushes himself, almost matches how pink Bucky is, tip of nose to tip of ears. He eases himself back onto his hands, arms behind him.

“No, Buck. Can’t say that I have.”

“Oh,” Bucky says. Then, “I ever kiss you?”

Steve shakes his head.

Bucky pauses.

“There a good reason for that?”

Steve’s starting to smile again.

“No, Buck. Can’t say that there was.”

Another pause.

“You gonna kiss me now?” Bucky asks.

Steve laughs.

“I was thinking about it,” he admits.

“Well what’re you waiting for?” Bucky turns to him, demanding.

“I was waiting for the right time,” Steve says.

Bucky points a finger at Steve, shoves it at his chest.

“No time like the present, pal.”

Steve laughs again, really throws his head back and laughs. Thinks,  _ I can’t believe how lucky I am.  _ Bucky looks equal parts embarrassed and thoroughly pleased. It's happy and lovely.

He catches Bucky’s wrist, pulls him closer, until Bucky’s hand is at his shoulder and Steve’s free hand is in Bucky’s hair. There’s two inches and barely a breath separating them.

“Can I kiss you?” Steve asks.

“God, yes,” Bucky breathes out. “Feels like I’ve been waiting lifetimes.”

Steve leans forward, closes the space between them, catches Bucky’s lips with his own, soft and sweet. If Bucky visibly melts into him, Steve doesn’t mention it, so busy is he trying to memorize this moment, the pressure of Bucky’s mouth against his own, the feel of Bucky’s hair sliding through his fingers. He feels warm, although the ocean breeze is cool, giddy, though so much heartache lays between them.

Bucky’s mouth opens up under his own, shyly at first, and Steve tentatively leans in, explores it with his tongue. Bucky tastes like coffee and sugar, which is almost enough to make Steve laugh, for just a moment.

Bucky’s hand winds around Steve’s neck and they deepen the kiss, breathe into one another, chest pressing into chest, before they break apart just so, laughing, bright, happy smiles on both of their faces.

“I always wondered how you’d kiss,” Bucky says.

“Always?” Steve asks, happily. His cheeks are warm. He can’t seem to stop grinning. “How’d I do?”

“Just like I thought,” Bucky says. His smile widens, mischievously. “Bossy.”

Steve throws his head back and laughs again and Bucky can’t seem to help himself, he leans forward and kisses Steve’s throat. Steve feels his warm lips against his skin, his own laughter reverberating against Bucky’s mouth.

“Let’s go home,” Bucky says.

“You tired of the view?” Steve raises an eyebrow.

Bucky barks out laughter, shakes his head.

“I wanna take the view with me,” he says, smiling. “If the view’s willing to come with me one more time.”

Steve ducks his head, smiles, absurdly pleased. Stupidly happy.

“The view’s willing to consider it,” he says.

“I wanna take you out,” Bucky says. “On a date. Pizza in Brooklyn.”

“Oh,” Steve says. “You took out everyone but me.”

“I know,” Bucky says and Steve thinks maybe he does remember. “Can’t seem to remember why. Something about homophobia in the 1930s, I’m guessing.”

Steve’s smile falters. His fingertips brush against Bucky’s cheek.

“It’s different now,” he says. “Mostly. Two guys can go together without getting kicked out of the city.”

“They can try,” Bucky says, flashing a grin, all teeth and no mirth. Then his expression softens, his metal hand tangled in Steve’s hair. “What d’you say, Stevie? Let’s go home.”

“Oh,” Steve says, a funny feeling in his chest. “Home.”

Bucky leans forward and kisses him again.

 

*

  
They say goodbye to Cape Town, pack their belongings, and buy two one-way tickets back to the United States. Sam picks them up at JFK and raises an eyebrow and Steve realizes a beat later that they’ve been holding hands this entire time. He flushes slightly and Bucky doubles down, glares at Sam, and presses a possessive kiss to Steve’s jaw.

“It’s about damn time,” Sam just says with a grin and a little head shake and Steve feels the ache in his chest, he’s unknowingly missed his friend so much. They give each other real hugs and Sam tells them Nick’s taken care of their fugitive status, that they aren’t wanted for treason anymore, but probably shouldn’t embroil themselves in another cross-border, International Incident again. That suits Steve just fine and he’s nearly out of his mind with gratitude when Sam hands him two sets of keys to a small brownstone in Park Slope.

  
“There are so many yuppies there, they’ll recognize you and forget to care the moment they round the corner and see the nearest Whole Foods,” Sam says.

“Sam, I can’t thank you enough,” Steve says. Bucky’s disappeared into their new home with their things. Despite everything, he’s still skittish around people, and he and Sam still barely know one another.

“Not me,” Sam says, shaking his head.

“Who, then?” Steve frowns.

“Man, you know,” Sam smiles. He claps Steve on the shoulder, tells him to call him once he and Bucky are settled in so that they can catch up.

Steve thinks again how stupidly, incomprehensibly lucky he is. He makes a mental note to call Natasha and send her a box of chocolate covered strawberries, one of three weaknesses she actually has and semi-occasionally admits to.

“Hey, Sam,” Steve says after a moment, as Sam turns on the front steps. “Tony. How is he?”

Sam doesn’t say anything for a moment. He’s fiddling with his sunglasses. Then he shrugs.

“You know Tony,” Sam says. “He’ll never say he’s wrong, but will find ten different ways to show you. I don’t know if he’s forgiven you, Steve. I don’t know if he’ll ever forgive Barnes. I don’t think it’s for lack of trying.”

“I know,” Steve says, a little sad. “It’s not his fault.”

“It’ll be okay,” Sam says. “Maybe not right now, but eventually. Clint still hasn’t said a single word to him.”

“Clint?” Steve blinks.

“Man,” Sam says, cracking up. “Remind me never to get on his bad side. Now I kinda get how he and Romanoff work.”

“You think Fury just found a group of the most stubborn, hot-tempered people with anger issues, threw them all together, and called it a team?” Steve asks, bemused.

“He has a bad sense of humor,” Sam says.

  
Sam takes his leave shortly after and Steve trudges up the stairs to his new home. He opens the door to find a pristine Brooklyn brownstone with soft, white carpet. Someone’s already furnished the apartment with a large, soft grey couch, a black coffee table, and an assortment of bookshelves, side tables, and desks besides. Their own belongings are carefully piled in one corner.

Steve smiles, his heart fluttering gently, as he spies Bucky, lying sprawled on the ground in the middle of their living room. Steve closes the door behind him, toes off his shoes, and lowers himself onto the ground next to Bucky.

Bucky turns his head.

“Your friends are nice,” he says, softly. “Batshit crazy, but nice.”

Steve smiles, fits himself next to Bucky, head on Bucky’s outstretched arm. Bucky rolls onto his side, his other arm coming up and laying loosely across Steve’s chest. 

“Never thought I’d get to do this again,” Steve admits after a moment.

“Find clean carpet in New York City?”

Steve snorts, then turns his head toward Bucky. Blue eyes stare into blue eyes. Both expressions are soft, fond.

“Make a home with you,” Steve says.

Bucky doesn’t say anything for a full minute, his face carefully blank, rendered speechless in some way.

“Home,” Bucky says, like the word’s foreign on his tongue.

“Yeah,” Steve agrees.

They breathe together, slowly, in tandem. The moment stretches between them, decades of history, fate intervening to tear them apart, and piece them back together again. Steve can feel it, the momentousness of their being here, at this moment, in this place, together. It should be impossible, a figment of his imagination, a dream he never meant to have. To have Bucky in his arms, to have the chance at a new life together, is more than he’s ever thought he’s deserved.

“Steve,” Bucky says, softly.

And Steve thinks he knows. He thinks time is stilling around them, a second here, an hour there, golden threads that have always spun him and Bucky closer and farther apart.

“Yeah,” Steve says.

“I love you,” Bucky says.

“Yeah,” Steve says again.

“I love you so much,” Bucky says. “I can’t breathe with it.”

Steve closes his eyes, tries to calm his breathing.

“I love you so much I think I must have spent lifetimes doing this,” Bucky says. “Just loving you.”

It’s not an easy feat, to make Steve Rogers cry. He can think of maybe three times in his life that he’s given in to it, the burning at the back of his throat, the deep, unbearable stickiness in his chest. But here, in this moment, he opens his eyes and everything’s a little blurry around him, wet at the edges.

“I love you, Bucky,” Steve says and something shifts in him, something between them, like time clicking into place, or an earth plate finally connecting miles below the surface. If everything stops for a beat, it’s because time itself has been waiting for this, this moment, not a second too late and not a second too soon.

He kisses him.

“I love you,” he says, laughing, giddy, hands framing Bucky’s face. “I love you, I love you.”

Bucky rolls over onto him, looks down at Steve, dark hair fanning out on either side of his face.

“It’s about time,” Bucky says, seriously, and Steve thinks of Sam, and he thinks of Caffe Nero and salted caramel lattes and hot air balloons and mountains and a bright blue house on a hill of bright houses, a line of resistance against the dark violence of history.

He laughs and pulls Bucky down closer. He kisses him again, lets his hands slide up under Bucky’s shirt, and he tells Bucky again and again that he loves him, and then he shows him just how much.


	10. epilogue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is it for this particular story. Thank you again to inyron for bidding on me and giving me a prompt I could turn into this monstrosity! I hope you (and everyone else) enjoyed it, even though I did put Bucky through the wringer. ♥
> 
> If you enjoyed this fic and have a hankering for some Avengers sci fi, I'll be continuing space husbands after this. :)!

_**viii. epilogue** _

  
Bucky’s waiting for Steve at a cafe, hair pulled back into a ponytail, sleeves of his button-down denim shirt rolled up to his elbows. It’s summer and it’s bright and hot and it’s a sign of the progress he’s made over the last year, that the sun catches in the grooves of his metal plates and he barely notices.

His phone is in front of him and he’s playing a level of Candy Crush that he can’t seem to beat. His gameplay is interrupted by a text, from Sam, who reminds him not to be late to the movie because the last time Bucky was late to a movie, all of the Swedish Fish were gone and they had to sit in between two rows of hormonal teenagers. Bucky snorts, sends a text somewhat to the effect of _fuck off, i can’t believe i agreed to watch some lame kid’s movie with yellow marshmallow men with you, people are gonna think we’re actually friends_ , as though he and Sam don’t have a bi-weekly movie date and as though he and Sam hadn’t marathoned Despicable Me, Despicable Me 2, and the Minions Movie one rather shameful weekend when Steve had gone on a mission with Natasha and Clint.

He feels relaxed today in a way he hasn’t in a while, as though things are finally falling into place. He hasn’t had a nightmare in weeks, his appetite is finally resembling a normal human’s, and he’s only had a panic attack in a crowd once in the last three months. Two weeks ago, he and Tony Stark managed to exchange monosyllabic “Hello”s at a tense and awkward Avengers dinner night that did not, for once, end in the two of them taking a swing at each other. He had gotten a job at a furniture store restoring and repairing antiques, which is a job he had never thought he would take to, but which he had found himself remarkably good at. 

Steve asked him just once if he wanted to join the Avengers Initiative and Bucky had given him a stony look, in bed, and asked Steve if he wanted to be the one to stop Bucky when he snapped, with no warning, his Winter Soldier hardwiring winning out over rationality. Steve hadn’t asked again, had just suggested Bucky get a hobby instead, and then Bucky had met an old man, maybe 85 years old, at an antique store who had started talking to him about a Queen Anne dressing table he was hunting for and one thing led to another and now he worked five days a week in the cool, dark basement of an antique furniture store, just himself, the old man, and the old man’s rather irritable cat, which was just the kind of outcome that Bucky preferred.

Steve’s running late and Bucky’s nervous. He has reason to be, he thinks, and he reaches into his pocket, pulls out a small, velvet box.

“Special day?” a voice suddenly asks him and Bucky nearly jumps out of his goddamned skin, thinking Steve’s appeared and seen.

“Oh,” Bucky says after he wildly looks up and takes a second to process that it’s not Steve, but a middle-aged man with salt-and-pepper hair and a dark mustache and goatee. His heart is hammering in his chest, so he takes a breath or two to calm down. “Yeah.”

“Who’s the lucky girl?” the man asks.

“Guy,” Bucky says, annoyed.

“Oh, my mistake,” the man says. There’s something about the way he says it, like he’s trying to hold back laughter, as though he knows something Bucky doesn’t. Bucky looks up at him, frowning, and the man is looking at him with amusement, almost fondness. “Who’s the lucky guy?”

“My best friend,” Bucky says, frowning. “Boyfriend.”

“You two must be very happy together,” the man says.

"We are." Bucky’s frown deepens as he looks at the man, at the loose, blue robe he’s wearing, belted, with a red, velvet jacket on over it.

“Hey, do I know you?” Bucky asks.

The man chuckles.

“No,” the man says. “And you won’t for a while.”

Bucky continues frowning.

“I don’t know what that means,” he says.

“I’m grateful for that,” the man says. “Although, I have to admit. I kind of miss our talks.”

“I literally have never spoken to you in my life,” Bucky says. “You’re not making any kinda sense.”

Something about that must amuse the man greatly, because he nearly throws back his head as he laughs, deep, from his stomach. When he finally stops, he’s nearly beaming. It makes Bucky soften. Whoever this man is, although he’s clearly out of his mind, he doesn’t seem to mean any harm.

“Congratulations,” the man says, straightening, gesturing at the velvet box. “I hope you live a long, happy life, Bucky Barnes.”

Before Bucky can say thanks, his phone vibrates with a series of text messages.

 _  
Stevie: Sorry I’m running late! Be there in 5 minutes. Dessert’s on me.  
_ _Stevie: Wait, no, shoot.  
_ _Stevie: I meant lunch! Not dessert!_  
Stevie: I DIDN’T MEAN DESSERT, BUCKY.

Bucky laughs and replies quickly.

_Thanks, just ordered an entire cake._

Too late, he registers what the man said.

“Wait, how do you know my--” but by the time Bucky looks up, the man’s disappeared.

Bucky looks around him, confused, but then Steve texts him back and he forgets again.

 _  
Stevie: I hate you.  
_ _Stevie: I’m joking._  
Stevie: I love you, rotten teeth and all.

Warmth flushes through Bucky’s stomach, crawls up his cheeks, and spreads across the back of his neck. He’s not fully healed and he’ll never completely be well. He will always have his ticks, his terrible anxiety, his more violent memories, blood on his hands that he will never, ever be able to wash away. And no matter what Steve says, he’ll never convince himself that he deserves this, Steve, their home, their life, their love, any of it.

But Bucky’s too selfish to not accept what he’s given and there’s not a day that goes by that he doesn’t appreciate it. It’s a new kind of luxury anyway, to be able to be selfish, after years of neglect and complete emotional and physical deprivation. To have someone in his life who not only allows him to want, but who encourages it so enthusiastically, wholeheartedly.

Bucky opens the velvet box, looks at the ring inside. It glints in the sunlight, golden, with a twist through the middle, like molten rope or woven threads of spun gold, and it reminds him of a not-memory, the wisp of something he might have seen once, a door, maybe an eye. They make his heart hammer in his chest, both the not-memory and the ring, the promise that they both carry. He closes the box and slips it back into his pocket, just in time.

“You did not order an entire cake,” Steve says, a little out of breath.

Bucky stands up to greet him and Steve looks concerned, but also kind of like he doesn’t care at all because he’s deeply, hopelessly infatuated and would give Bucky any single thing he asked. Bucky leans forward and kisses him, kisses Steve, in public, for anyone who wishes to see. Steve's smile widens.

“You’re right,” Bucky says, grinning, happily. “I ordered two.”

  
In this timeline, Bucky Barnes finally finds his happy ending. It isn’t easy and, in fact, it costs him an unspeakable amount--years of pain, decades of incomprehensible horror, the loss of an entire world and the person he loves most in it. When he does find it, his happy ending, it isn’t a moment too soon and it isn’t a moment too late. It happens exactly when it’s supposed to and, because of that, it stays with him, with them, for a very, very long time.

  
*

  
“Thank god,” Stephen Strange says to himself, smiling, on his summit, the timeline shimmering before him fixed, whole, everything as it should be.   
  
Perhaps, he thinks, even better.

**Author's Note:**

> I can be found on tumblr @ [thranduilcrowns](http://thranduilcrowns.tumblr.com/) for a variety of posts or @ [spacerenegades](http://spacerenegades.tumblr.com/) for pure fanart reblogging purposes.


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